Pineapple Upside Down Cake is a classic American recipe, and has the most perfect light, but moist crumb, and is filled with delicious pineapple flavor. Hold onto your hats, this is seriously amazing!
Pineapple upside down cake is such a classic recipe! So often it can be totally underrated. While it may not be the first cake recipe you think of when you’re planning a birthday party or making a dessert, it will certainly be memorable once you take that first bite. The topping of this pineapple upside down cake is made with brown sugar and butter. When it goes into the oven it melts and cooks and turns into a caramel-like texture. That’s heavenly on its own, but then we top it with pineapple and cherries!
When you flip the cake over so the pineapples are on the top, that caramel mixture seeps into the cake and makes this pineapple upside down cake so tender and moist. We prefer to serve this pineapple upside down cake a little warm, but you can easily serve it cold, straight out of the refrigerator. If you serve it warm, make sure to grab a pint of vanilla ice cream to go on top. You’ll thank me later.
Do I need to grease the cake pan?
Not this time. The melted butter in the bottom of the pan is all that you should need for it to come out easily, once you gently run a knife around the edges of the pan.
Can I make this in a 9×13 pan?
This recipe can easily be doubled and baked in a 9×13 pan. All ingredients should simply be doubled. The baking time will remain roughly the same at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 40-45 minutes.
Yogurt Options for Pineapple Upside Down Cake:
We love the tanginess of full fat Greek yogurt, but you can use any plain yogurt. Fat free, low fat, whole fat, dairy free, it’s up to you! In a pinch? Sour cream works too!
Storage Instructions:
To store pineapple upside down cake you can put it in the refrigerator. To make sure the pineapple and cherries don’t stick to your plastic wrap, stick toothpicks around the edges and in the middle. Once you’ve done that, wrap both the cake and its plate loosely in the plastic wrap. Place the pineapple upside down cake in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. In addition to being stored in the refrigerator, you can cover this cake in plastic wrap and place it in the freezer for up to one month, but I promise it won’t last that long!
If you like this recipe, you may be interested in these other amazing cake recipes:
Watch the video below where we will walk you through every step of the recipe with a video demonstration.
My mum and nan made this for us in the 60s in the UK so I wouldn’t say it’s a classic American recipe
I’m so glad you got introduced to it! The original recipe came from an advertising campaign in the 1920s where Dole ran a recipe contest to promote canned pineapple. Pineapple Upside Down Cake was the winning recipe and they promoted it everywhere.It was the most popular cake to make in American in the 1930s. Of course, they didn’t invent the upside down cake in general (that goes back to the middle ages), but that is where we first see pineapple.
All the other recipe doesn’t cost for milk. Why does yours? Thank you Janet Hilliard.
I use milk in my cakes for the added fat content which adds moisture.
I make these in oversized cupcake tins and they are individual desserts. I put a pineapple ring with the cherry in the bottom of each tin. Easier to serve with whip cream on top.
This is absolutely delicious! The pineapple is so sweet and tangy and the cake is so sweet and soft…the perfect combination! We liked the pineapple juice in the cake to give it a pineapple flavor. 🙂 Thank you for a great recipe! We hope to make this again!
I think my daughter-in-law nailed it we loved it was so good after our Easter meal
Can you use a bunt pan ? And would I need to double the recipe to do so ?
A Bundt pan isn’t ideal for a traditional pineapple upside-down cake because of the way the fruit and topping are arranged. Since the cake is inverted after baking, using a Bundt pan makes it harder to keep the pineapple slices and brown sugar topping in place—they tend to stick or shift, and the design of the pan can make flipping tricky.
That said, some people do experiment with it by placing halved or chopped pineapple pieces and cherries carefully in the bottom grooves and using a generous amount of nonstick spray. You wouldn’t need to double the recipe—a standard pineapple upside-down cake recipe should fill a regular Bundt pan about two-thirds of the way.