¡ǝlddɐǝuᴉԀ

 It's a bank holiday, and I'm not teaching for once! The weather's a bit crap too, so it's a perfect opportunity to bake something. For no reason other than the fact that I saw it online and it looked good and easy, I'decided to go for this pineapple upside-down cake from King Arthur Baking, with only very minor substitutions for what ingredients I had.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Ingredients

For the topping

• 57g Butter
• 106g Soft dark brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp Ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp Ground ginger
• 1 large tin (425g) Pineapple slices
• 7 Frozen cherries 

For the cake

• 43g Butter
• 149g Granulated sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 3/4 Baking powder
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 150g Plain flour
• 113g Milk

Method

1. Melt the butter for the topping.
2. Mix in the dark brown sugar, cinnamon and ginger.
3. Spread over the base of a greased cast iron skillet*.
4. Arrange the pineapple slices and cherries over the top.
5. Cream the butter for the cake and granulated sugar together.
6. Beat in the egg, salt, baking powder and vanilla.
7. Mix in the plain flour and milk, alternating a little at a time, to form a relatively thick batter.
8. Spoon over the toppings.
9. Bake at 190C for ~30 mins until a skewer comes out clean.
10. Remove from oven and wait 3 minutes.
11. Invert onto a plate and wait 30s before lifting the pan off.

*I think I've got a 10 inch skillet

Here's the topping at the end of step 4:

And here's the cake ready for the oven. The layers are both fairly thin, but I did get full coverage on both.

It released cleanly from the pan! Looks pretty darned good in my opinion.

This one surprised me with how good it was overall. The cake part is rather bland and boring, but it's thin enough that it doesn't really matter. But the topping is lovely - rather sweet, but again thin enough not to be overwhelming. For the low effort required, this cake is really rather good!