Pineapple Upside Down Cake with Easy Cherry & Pecan Ice Cream

I have had a hankering for Pineapple Upside Down Cake for a very long time. It even got me into  a cook off with my friend Jenny (an amazingly talented baker who has her own blog: Almond and Ginger). We never really had the cook off, but it gave us both an excuse to make our desired upside down treat (Jenny made an Apricot and Cranberry version that sounds delicious.) 

I knew even before I started looking for recipes I wanted to make a traditional cake. I imagined myself to be a discerning 50’s housewife, hoping to impress dinner party guests and defend her status as homemaker with her famous Pineapple Upside Down Cake. I must have looked at over 20 different recipes before I arrived at Thomas Keller’s. I stopped at his because it semmed like to most low-maintenance (full explanation just ahead) and, well, he is Thomas Keller! This man is the legendary chef behind The French Laundry and per se. If he thinks something is tasty enough to put in a cookbook, it probably is. 

Mr. Keller’s recipe is definitely unique in terms of ease of preparation. Opting out of the traditional caramel base in a cast iron skillet, he uses a “shmear” on the bottom of a 9 inch cake pan. Even though the techniques may be new, the resulting cake looked like something out of the Sears Roebuck Catalogue. Since the recipe calls for neither pecans nor cherries, ingredients sometimes found in a PUDC, I decided to make a simple Cherry and Pecan ice cream to serve with mine. 

Thomas Keller’s Cake Recipe: (found in his cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home)

For pan schmear:

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 tablespoons honey

1/2 teaspoon dark rum

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla paste or pure vanilla extract

Kosher salt

1 Gold (extra -sweet) pineapple

For cake:

1 1/3 cups cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste or pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all the ingredients for the shmear together until well-combined. Spread 1/3 cup of the mixture on the bottom of a 9 inch cake pan. Layer thin slices of pineapple (I used half rings) until the bottom is fully covered.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add each egg one by one. Then, add milk and vanilla extract. Slowly add in the flour and baking powder, that have been sifted together. Batter will look light and fluffy. Pour over pineapple layer and cook at 350 F for 30 to 40 minutes, until a knife comes out clean. Let cool for 20 minutes on a rack, and then carefully flip over onto cake platter.

Here is the finished product.

Easy (cough* semi-homemade* cough) Cherry and Pecan Ice Cream: 

1 Pint of Vanilla Ice Cream (if you want to make your own, be my guest) 

1 handful of toasted and chopped pecans

1 handful of dried cherries

3 tablespoons Pineapple juice

Let cherries and pineapple juice come to a boil in a small sauce pan and then let simmer until cherries get plump and juice gets syrupy. Mix in pecans and fold the mixture into the vanilla ice cream (this works better if the ice cream has been transferred to a larger container AND if it has been allowed to soften a bit.) Put ice cream in the freezer for at least 3 hours to firm up.

Enjoy!