Easy Pineapple Upside Down Cake to Say “Welcome!”

Let’s take a trip back in time for a moment to… Colonial America.

Imagine you are visiting as an overnight guest in our home. It is near supper time. You enter our home and we exchange pleasantries. We are Foodies, so we want to get right to the business of the evening, eating supper! We take you to our dining room, and the first thing you notice is a beautiful fresh pineapple gracing the center of our table. It is set with five place settings, one for each member of our family and one for you. (You can add another one in your mind if there would be a significant other with you.) We ask you to have a seat, and The Lucky Wife serves something delicious that The Chef has prepared, something special that we chose specifically with you in mind.

After we indulge, we have the dessert. It would be something as delicious as this Pineapple Upside Down Cake, for sure, but the one key ingredient would most certainly be pineapple. After we finish our meal, we spend some time together, and then we take you to the room where you will sleep (could be a guest room or the Master bedroom). You notice a beautiful bed with a pineapple carved on the headboard.

Now back to real life. This is what hospitality looked like during that time in American History, according to WikiAnswers. We wanted to incorporate a taste of this into our welcoming of you, our guest, here at The Saturday Evening Pot. We want you to feel welcome and to enjoy whatever time you choose to spend looking at the different recipes we serve.

We got to thinking about how we sometimes communicate with food in our culture, and we thought we would serve a special recipe that says, “Welcome!”, to our guests as our first recipe in our March dessert series. Since the pineapple has long been a symbol of hospitality and warm welcome in America, we figured what could be better than a Pineapple Upside Down Cake? The idea was inspired (through The Lucky Wife) while eating at one of our family’s favorite restaurants, none other than The Cracker Barrel! They currently serve Pineapple Upside Down Cake on their dessert menu, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, which has quickly become a favorite of The Well-Fed Son. He could not stop talking about the fact that they had run out of this on one of our recent visits, when we ordered Apple Pie instead.

This particular recipe for Pineapple Upside Down Cake we slightly adapted from All Recipes. The Lucky Wife preferred the look of pineapple chunks as opposed to the slices this recipe calls for. It was easy to make, requires just a few ingredients, and turned out delicious. The Well-Fed Son has not been a big cake fan in the past, but he loves this one.

Do you have anything special you do for guests in your home to make them feel welcome?

Easy Pineapple Upside Down Cake

(Slightly adapted from All Recipes)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 20-ounce can pineapple chunks
10 maraschino cherries
1 (18.25-ounce) package yellow cake mix (we used gluten-free)

Cooking Directions:

Melt butter over medium-high heat in iron skillet. Remove from heat and sprinkle brown sugar evenly to cover butter. Arrange pineapple chunks and cherries around bottom of pan, one layer deep, as desired.

Prepare cake mix as directed by manufacturer, substituting some of pineapple juice for some of liquid in directions. Pour batter over pineapple/cherry layer. Bake as directed by cake mix directions. Cool for ten minutes, then carefully turn onto a plate. (NOTE: Do not let the cake cool too much or it will stick to the pan.)

For more “Welcome” recipes, click on the pineapple:

Recipe URL (for SEO code editing): http://recipeseo.com/recipe/URo3Z

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Family ratings:

Rating scale

1 star - Feed it to the dog

2 stars - Surprise your neighbor

3 stars - Definite keeper

4 stars - Looking forward to leftovers

5 stars - Clean plate and nap time! Are there enough ingredients left to make it again soon?

The Chef - 4 Stars

The Lucky Wife - 4 Stars

The Well-Fed Son (4 years old) - 5 Stars

The Well-Fed Daughter (6 months old) - Mommy’s Baby Girl (4 Stars)

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Shared at Sunday Showcase, Titus 2sdays, Tip Me Tuesday, Sweet Tooth Friday, Friday Potluck, The Great Cooking Magazine Challenge and It’s a Keeper Thursday, Recipe Round-Up.

About the Author

Raised in eastern North Carolina, The Chef has always most loved southern cuisine. While working for a top resort just after finishing Culinary School at Johnson and Wales University, when they still had a campus located in Charleston, South Carolina, he began learning about Gullah cuisine and enjoys it as well. He's a family man and country boy at heart, loves hunting and is a big fan of the John Boy and Billy Big Show and the Carolina Panthers.