1917 to 1945 Cake #5

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

The following is an excerpt directly from the book:

History of the Pineapple Upside Down Cake: In 1925 the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, what is now Dole Food Co., staged a recipe contest asking cooks to submit their best recipe using canned pineapple. Of the 60,000 entries, some 2,500 were for pineapple upside down cake, variations on early skillet cakes. Pineapple was the ingredient of the moment. And Dole was the largest pineapple packer in the world, founded by Harvard graduate and entrepreneur James Dole. He traveled to Hawaii at the turn of the 20th century and helped create the equipment to peel, cut, and pack canned pineapple.

This cake is vanilla cake batter poured on top of butter, sugar, and pineapple in an ovenproof skillet. The flip of the cake was fun and a bit dramatic so it became popular in the good times of the roaring twenties. The recipe in this book is adapted from the Dole Food Company.

My Experience:

I did not have the right size skillet but was not about to buy a new one for the cake. The elements of making the cake were not too complicated. I was a dodo and bought pineapple pieces instead of the pretty rings so mine did not have that cool dramatic geometrical look. The cake was ok, but not a favorite. The neighbors did not have much to say about it either.