Pineapple Upside Cake

I've been meaning to write a post since the beginning of the month, you know, as one does when they come back from a month-long holiday- usually of beautiful holiday shots and food so delicious it makes you want to hop onto the next plane to that exact destination. But instead, I'm still trying to sort through the few thousand photos I took, to find the couple of food shots that I was actually bothered to take (you're allowed to be lazy when you're on holidays right??) so that post might just take a little while for me to write....

But the longer I don't write a post, the more time I keep spending just thinking about my blog. It's crazy, I know.

In other news, I turned on the oven for the first time this year last week for my mum's birthday. She didn't want anything too messy or complicated and ended up choosing a pineapple upside down cake, which was just as well as it's something I've been wanting to try for a while. And it gave me an excuse to start making my way through the many cookbooks I just bought in Hong Kong!

The original recipe that my mum had chosen caramel pineapple upside-down cake, but as much as I loved the idea of adding the caramel to the cake, I wasn't too fond of using the whole block of butter called for in the recipe so I used the recipe a simple buttercake recipe (from the next page of the book) instead. Though the cake turned out quite ugly, and far from perfect, it was very enjoyable- I'll definitely be trying out more pineapple upside-down cakes!!

Pineapple Upside-down cake
Recipe from 100 Desserts 西式甜品

for the pinapple layer
3 tbsp butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 fresh pineapple
1/2tsp vanilla essence

for the cake layer
180g flour
1 1/2tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, at room temperature
120g butter, at room temperature
120g caster sugar
4 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1. Slice the pinapple. Cook the butter and brown sugar in a pot until sugar dissolves. Put in the sliced pineapple and cook for about 10 minutes. Add vanilla essence and stir well. Set aside. (I cooked the caramel/syrup for a little longer)
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. In another bowl, whisk eggs and milk until well incorporated.
3. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until creamy. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients and 1/3 of the egg mixture at a time. beat well after each addition. Repeat until all ingredients are added. stir in vanilla essence at last. (I also added 1/2 cup of pineapple chunks)
4. Grease a 20cm square cake tin with butter. Arrange the pineapple from step 1 on the bottom (I also poured some of the caramel/syrup in there as well). Top with the cake batter.
5. Bake in 190degC preheated oven for about 30 minutes. Set aside to cool. Turn the cake out with the pineapple facing up. Slice and serve.