I never hide the fact from anyone that I am a huge Nigella Lawson fan. In fact if I could I would morph into her rather beautiful voluptuous self tomorrow. But considering this is very unlikely I will just have to stick to using her recipes! I was mooching around her website in the early hours of this morning for no real reason apart from to paw and coo over some of her decadent dessert recipes when I came across one for Pineapple Upside Down Cake. At the time Rob was standing in the corner of his bedroom taking photos of his newly founded black food dye and the mere mention of said cake produced a sequel from the corner. Never missing out on a chance to make him smile it was then decided. Pineapple Upside Down cake it is.
After speaking to couple of other people (my mother included) it turns out this cake is popular one to bake, it seems to go down well with most people. Something I was never completely sure of. I’d had discussions with other people about this cake before and the idea of it never really thrilled me, all I knew about it is that it was like a tarte tatin but without the tarte! That said though, I am the kind of girl who tries everything once so here we go on Rebecca’s first ever Pineapple Upside Down cake (with a twist) adventure!
As I said before this is a recipe adapted from Nigella, it mostly remains intact but I have added a couple of ingredients in to give it my own little twist. If you’re not a huge fan of pineapple you can replace it with apples, pears or plums.
Ingredients
Serves 8
7 slices of pineapple (I am using canned pineapple, but you can peel and chop the real thing if you want to)
11 glacé cherries
3 tsp of the juice
2 tsp sugar
100g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp of vanilla essence (or the seeds of the pod)
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g soft butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
50g melted dark chocolate
Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Butter all round your cake tin and then sprinkle over two teaspoons of sugar. I used a loose-bottomed baking tin and this worked fine for me.
Arrange your pineapple slices around the tin and place a glacé cherry in each of the pineapple rings and the spaces in between.
Put the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, butter, caster sugar, eggs and vanilla essence into a food processor (I used a hand held blender and it did the job) and run the motor until the batter is smooth. Then pour in the 3 tablespoons of pineapple juice to thin it a little, this also makes the sponge fluffy.
Pour the mixture over the pineapple rings, and very carefully spread it evenly being careful not to displace your cherries. The mixture will only just cover the pineapples so don’t be alarmed and think you haven’t enough mixture.
Bake for 30 minutes, then ease a spatula (or a knife if you’re careful) around the edge of the tin, place a plate on top and use the collective will of everyone in the room and hope for the best and turn it upside down!
Once the cake is turned out, melt the dark chocolate over boiling water and drizzle over the top of the cake.
And there you have it, a perfectly formed cake. Remember it contains a fair bit of pineapple, therefore, it counts as one of your five-a-day so you’ve no excuse not to tuck in. If this recipe has scared or confused you there is always the option of using this (terrible) tin!
