Foodie Friday- A Classic Sort Of

I was in a mood recently for a cake, and I had fresh pineapple in the the fridge, so I thought why not a pineapple upside down cake. Cakes have never been my strength, but I am learning.  I looked at a couple of online sources and nothing looked like fun.  So I winged it. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

The pineapple was already cubed the base/top of the cake is pineapple mixed with melted butter and brown sugar to make a basic caramel.  I started with a half pound of Irish butter, about 1/3rd of that was melted for the caramel sauce.  How much brown sugar? I didn't measure, I mixed it with the melted butter until it looked about right.  

The rest of the butter was creamed with about 3/4 of a cup of granulated sugar, until light and fluffy.  I added three eggs, beat it on medium for two or three minutes until it was light and fluffy.  I mixed about 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, a heaping teaspoon of baking soda, a heaping teaspoon of baking powder, a generous pinch of salt and slowly mixed into the wet ingredients.  I added a generous tablespoon of vanilla extract.  It hadn't quiet picked up all of the dry ingredients, so I mixed in two heaping soup spoons of sour cream.  

I sprayed a rectangular glass baking dish with cooking spray.  Spread the pineapple, with the butter and brown sugar mixture in the bottom, then layered the cake batter over the top, it makes a thin layer of batter, barely covering the pineapple.  

Bake about 35 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.  Cool for 30 minutes, cover with a plastic cutting board, flip, and hope that the caked falls out of the pan.  Miracle of all miracles it worked.   I slid it back in the baking dish, pineapple side up, I have a snap lid for that baking dish.  

It is my version of a classic, sort of, and it worked, it really worked.  The sour cream adds a lot of moisture.  Store tightly covered in the refrigerator, if it lasts long enough to need storing.  

I have been reading a book that among others talks about the relationship between Julia Child and Simone Beck.  Simone cooked and baked the way this was done, I call it winging it, Simone (co-author of the two volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking) thought of it as cooking by instinct and technique, knowing how to cook and adjusting as needed.  Julia was the one who insisted on precise measurements and detailed instructions (8 pages on how to boil an egg, 24 pages on french bread.) I learned to cook with detail, but failed to learn to bake by detail, because so many factors impact baking, temperature, humidity, ingredients, elevation, minor differences in ovens, even the material the mixing bowl is made out of can change the chemistry of baking. Learning to bake by technique and instinct has settled in later in life, and it works, sometimes it really works.