Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cakes

Having a Filipino mom and growing up in California, pineapple was a staple in our home. Mom would spend time patiently carving out the little piney bits and slicing the golden flesh into chunks which my sister and I would eat out of the bowl with our sticky hands.

This photo makes me salivate!

It still remains one of my most favorite fruits, and despite the grocery stores usually flying in Maui Golds--which are amazingly awesome especially when on Maui--I still tend to pick underripe pineapples. This time, with a pineapple flown in from a plantation in Costa Rica, I hit on a deliciously ripe and juicy specimen. It was really, really hard not to abandon the cake baking and just eat it right out of the bowl. Really hard. Especially since the cake was a bust. *sigh*

January 31, 2010
Name of Cake: Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cakes
Occasion: HCB
Constituents: Sliced fresh pineapple, 2 kinds of caramel, and a teeny bit of cake

First off, I used the wrong kind of ramekins. I know, Rose tells you exactly which kind to use, but I didn't check mine as I was convinced I had the right kind. Until I saw Raymond's photos I didn't remember those kind existed! The ramekins I have are wide and shallow. This is great for creme brulee but makes for a shallow upside down cake, which was our biggest complaint: not enough cake.

As you can see from the top left photo I also burnt the crap out of the caramel that goes down at the bottom of the ramekins. It looked dark (I realise now the color I had was not dark amber, but burnt), the temp looked right (it couldn't have been), but it was pretty darn bitter. This wasn't too bad in the final tasting as the pineapple caramel that gets made to top the cakes covered up most of the bitterness of the burnt stuff. If you paid attention, there was a bit of a bitter aftertaste.

where's the cake? so sad.

Oh--this was a surprise: I forgot to grease and flour the ramekins but the little cakes came out cleanly, with no fuss. Can you believe that? I couldn't.

If I make this again and I might not, because I'll always prefer to eat pineapple as it is, I think I'll do what Faithy did and make a little 6 inch cake. That way I won't be buying any more extra stuff, which my tiny little kitchen cannot support.

Well, I'm off to buy another pineapple...to eat the old fashioned way!

Update: The leftover pineapple caramel glaze really is delicious mixed into plain yogurt. The pineappley yumminess almost makes up for the whole cake being a bust!