Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Modified from Recipes + magazine. The original recipe was meant to be for individual mini cakes, but due to my lack of bakeware, I decided to make it into a full-sized cake. It turned out pretty good, and I'm now working on modifying it ever so slightly. Stay tuned! (I'm also working on getting a better picture!)

Ingredients

Topping
Golden Syrup
Pineapple Rings (preferably in natural juice not syrup)
Glace red cherries

Cake mix
1 cup self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
I teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 cup caster sugar
80g butter, softened
*1/2 cup pineapple juice - reserved from the can of Pineapple rings


*I suspect you could probably use pineapple juice instead if you didn't manage to get pineapple rings in syrup.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Drain pineapple, reserving the juice.
3. Grease a cake tin with butter, or olive oil.
4. Estimate how many pineapple rings can line the tray. You need to put 1 tablespoon of golden syrup for each pineapple ring into the tray. Try to spread the golden syrup out.
   
5. Place the pineapple rings in the greased and syrup-ed tray. Put one cherry in the middle of the hollow of the pineapple ring. If you like, you can fill the gaps with cherries as well.
   
6. Beat butter and sugar, using an electric mixer, until light and creamy.
7. Add egg, vanilla and a pinch of salt. Beat until fluffy.
8. Add flour (with baking powder) and reserved juice in alternating batches,beating until just blended. Pour the batter over the fruit.
   
9. Bake until the cake is firm when pressed. See tips below.
   

Tips

Because the original recipe was for mini cakes, the amount of cooking time required was significantly lesser than for a square cake. In the original recipe, it was suggested that the mini cakes be allowed to bake for 15 minutes. However, using a larger mould to create an actual cake, it took my cake at least half an hour to bake.

You might want to consider putting the cake tin on a cookie tray when you want to stick it in the oven. For some weird reason, when I baked this cake, some of the golden syrup dripped down to the bottom of the oven. Not happy!!

When lining the tin with pineapple - you want to try to get it covered with as much golden syrup possible. The idea is that the syrup melts and sort of caramelizes the pineapples. Syrup in the hollow of the ring doesn't really penetrate the pineapple.

The basic cake recipe I've provided was topped with 4 pineapple ringss. In the magazine article, it made 6 mini cakes, each with one pineapple ring on top. If you manage to fit in more pineapple rings, you might want to consider doubling the recipe.