I was in the mood for Pineapple Upside Down cake, thought about it for days before I finally asked Rob to pick up a couple of ingredients I needed.
I know this cake is fairly simple, but it had been years since I last made it, so looked up a recipe to make sure I got it right. That may have been my first mistake.
But at the time, the recipe sounded great. Got all the ingredients out, double checked my measurements. (Not my personal measurement, those for the cake.) Then went to get out my cake oblong pan so I could put the butter in and let it melt in the over.
Second mistake - a Big One. Totally forgot that I hadn't seen that particular pan since the move. Searched anyway. Still haven't found it.
So I settled on an oval oblong oven save casserole dish, not the same length, but more depth.
One of the directions in the recipe was to sprinkle the brown sugar over the butter in the pan. But during the measuring the brown sugar I was instructed to "pack" it in the measuring cup.
Have you ever tried to sprinkle packed brown sugar? Even unpack I doubt it would work very well. But packed simply refused to sprinkle. So I used my best judgement and with a fork attempted to mix butter and brown sugar together and spread across the bottom of the dish.
That was only semi successful.
Oh, I forgot to tell you, I asked Rob to get me a can of Crushed Pineapple. Yes, I know, most people use Pineapple rings, but I prefer to get a taste of pineapple in every bite. I also asked him to get a small jar of cherries.
What I received was a can of pineapple chucks and a can of Sour Cherries. Okay, I put the chunks of pineapples in the food processor and came up with something similar to crushed. But when I opened the can of cherries and tasted one, it was definitely a No Go. Not only were they truly sour they were a unappetizing brown color.
Finally got everything in the casserole dish and in the over. Since the dish was deeper than a pan would have been and was full to within a 1/8 inch of the rim, I set it all on a cookie sheet in case of an over flow. Also knew the deeper dish would call for longer cooking time.
I checked the cake so many times to see if it was done several times before the butter knife came out clean. Then I had to let it cook before I could do a taste test.
Eventually I couldn't wait any longer. The cake was still on the warm side when I cut a small slice. The cake part was (and is still) fine. But the brown sugar, pineapple mixture on the bottom seems to have had a mind of it's own. It was easy to see the mixture was thicker and thinner in spots. Later I found some spots that didn't have any noticeable pineapple mixture at all.
Next time I'll not bother with a recipe, just go with the memory of how Mother always did hers and I later learned to do much as she did. That method worked every time.
