This was the first pineapple upside down cake I’ve ever made, and I was planning on using fresh pineapple AND fresh blueberries! Sounds good, right? I used this recipe by Paula Deen), and was intrigued by the frosting since I’d never seen it that way before. But I made it. And honestly? I could have done without it. The cake itself was REALLY good (super moist!) but the frosting was complete sugary overload that ended up taking away from the fruit itself. (That said, I was impressed that just 2 Tbs of pineapple juice was enough to really flavor the frosting.)
I did have a slight issue with the cakes coming out of the pans—I let them cool for the recommended 10 minutes but they were still very hot and some of the fruit started slip-sliding off the cake! But I’m guessing the fresh fruit had something to do with the excess moisture. There also seemed to be too much sugar, as well. I was using 8″ round cake pans, and 3/4 cup brown sugar in each one just seemed like A LOT. If I make this again, I will use less sugar. Oh, and there was too much batter as well. I had two FULL 8″ pans plus a tiny loaf pan. Which meant we just had a separate blueberry-topped loaf (yum!).
The cakes:
Unfortunately, I suck at frosting cakes, plus the frosting wasn’t quite room temp so it was a bit hard to spread, plus the fruit was really moving around… I was just going to do the sides, but then I had frosting left so then I thought I’d just put a dollop in the center…but then it looked like there was enough to finish frosting it…then it got messy and yucky looking. 😐
