When I was a kid, my mom’s go-to dessert recipe was pineapple upside-down cake. She used canned pineapple—just like every other mom who grew up in the 1950s and ’60s—placed maraschino cherries in the center of each slice and served her gooey masterpiece on a glass cake platter. After dinner, using an antique silver cake server, my mom transferred slices of the warm dessert onto our plates, each topped with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream. As the ice cream melted, it mimicked crème anglaise. It would have been Instagram worthy back then, but of course that was long before social media and the idea that “the camera eats first.”
As the story goes, the original recipe for pineapple upside-down cake is from a Dole Plantation pineapple recipe contest in 1925. The winning recipe was so popular Dole launched an entire advertising campaign featuring the dessert.
Photo: Courtesy of Fête
This past summer, Chris Macey, a bartender at Fête in Honolulu’s Chinatown, created a cocktail based on the retro dessert and it took me straight back to my childhood in San Diego. My recipe for mini pineapple upside-down cakes is a riff on that cocktail.
Note: For this recipe, you will need two nonstick jumbo muffin pans (like this) and two ring molds—one that is the same size as the muffin that your pan will produce and the other the size of a pineapple core.
“Grab ’Em by the Muffins” Mini Upside-Down Pineapple Cakes
(Makes 12 individual cakes)
Ingredients:
- 2 cups spiced rum, reduced to 1 cup
- ½ cup pineapple juice
- ½ cup blackstrap molasses
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup dried cherries
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup packed brown sugar, plus more for coating muffin pans
- ¼ cup sliced almonds, untoasted
- 2 each fresh pineapple, sliced just over ¼-inch thick (you can leave the skin on)
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup canola oil
- Zest of 1 lemon
Other equipment:
- Muffin pan liners
Optional:
- Vanilla ice cream
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. In a medium high-sided pot, boil the rum until it is reduced by half, add the pineapple juice and molasses and return to a boil. Remove from the heat and whisk in baking soda. (You may want to do this over the sink as the mixture will bubble up to the surface.) Add the dried cherries and cool to room temperature.
3. Line two muffin pans with paper liners. Brush the liners all over with butter and pack 1-2 teaspoons of brown sugar in an even layer at the bottom of each one. Sprinkle about a teaspoon of sliced almonds in each section of the muffin tins. Stamp out 12 pineapple rounds using your larger ring mold. Then remove the core of each pineapple slice with your smaller ring mold.
4. Place one pineapple slice in each section of the prepared muffin tins and set aside.
5. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or with electric beaters, whisk the eggs, 1 cup brown sugar and granulated sugar until smooth. Add the oil and lemon zest and mix until smooth.
6. Strain the cherries from the rum mixture and reserve, add the rum mixture to the egg mixture and mix until smooth. Add the flour mixture and mix until combined. Do not over mix.
7. Divide the soaked cherries equally into the muffin pans on top of the pineapple. Pour the cake batter over the top.
8. Bake 20 minutes then rotate the pans and bake another 15 minutes until you can insert a toothpick into the cake and it comes out clean.
9. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 5 minutes, but no more (the cakes need to still be warm to slide out of the pan easily).
10. Take a butter knife and run it around the sides of each cake to loosen from the pan. Invert each pan onto a cutting board, giving a good whack. The cakes should pop right out, showcasing the sliced almonds and pineapple on top.
11. Serve cakes still warm with vanilla ice cream.
Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino
Sarah Burchard is a frequent contributor to HAWAIʻI Magazine.
ʻOno at Home is HAWAIʻI Magazine’s recipe series that brings the flavors of the Islands to you, wherever you are in the world.
