Huffman Pineapple Upsidedown Cake

 

This is my mom's pineapple upsidedown cake recipe. I am still not able to make pineapple upsidedown cake as well as my mother. Her cakes are the best. The caramel crust on her pineapple upsidedown cakes are so crisp and praline-like. She has made this cake probably a hundred times. When she melts the butter and sugar in the skillet she knows by experience how long to cook the mixture. She doesn't time it. She doesn't measure the temperature. So she can't tell me exactly how to replicate what she does. One of these days I am going to practice pineapple upsidedown cakes until I get it perfect like she does. Now I will have the recipe to do it right.

Melissa Huffman's Perfect Pineapple Upsidedown Cake 

1 stick of butter

1 3/4 cup of brown sugar

1 can pineapple rings 

1 jar of maraschino cherries

1 box plus 1/2 cup more from a second box of yellow butter recipe cake mix

3 eggs

1/3 cup oil

1 1/4 cup pineapple juice

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Mix the cake mix with eggs and add oil and pineapple juice 

Melt butter in iron skillet and add brown sugar and spread evenly and turn off. Put pineapple rings and cherries in place. Pour cake batter over. 

Bake for 45 minutes or until tests clean. Turn out onto platter immediately.

In case you don't have box cake mix, I used the following and the cake part of the pineapple upsidedown cake was good.

Yellow Cake from Scratch 

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups white sugar

½ cup oil + 2 TBS. butter

3 eggs

1 1/4 cup pineapple juice (or how ever much pineapple juice you have plus enough sour cream to make 1 1/4 cups)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract