A simple cake can be elevated to a whole new level just by adding flavorful ingredients like fresh fruit juice, chewy fruits, chopped nuts, toasted seeds, aromatic spices, or cocoa. I find the fruits glazed with butter and syrup the most delightful addition into any spongy cake. Here I have baked an eggless pineapple upside down cake using whole wheat flour, maize flour and caramelized pineapple slices.
Pineapple upside down cake recipe:
I have baked this cake without adding maida (bleached flour/ APF), butter and eggs; I have replaced APF with whole wheat flour & maize flour. Now the recipe for pineapple upside down cake is as below. You can also check out my other eggless cake recipes using our native fruits like banana, mango, fig, jackfruit, etc.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup of whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup of maize flour (makka chola maavu)
- 1 and 1/4 tsp of baking powder
- 1/2 tsp of baking soda
- 1 cup of curd
- 3/4 cup of demerara sugar
- 1/2 cup of neutral oil (I used sunflower oil)
Ingredients for pineapple glaze:
- 7 slices of canned pineapple
- 7 candied cherries
- 1 tbsp of butter
- 1/4 cup of demerara sugar
How to prepare cake batter:
- Sieve wheat flour & maize flour through a fine sieve and keep aside.
- Powder the demerara sugar using a mixer grinder.
- Add powdered sugar, curd, oil, baking powder & baking soda into a mixing bowl and mix well.
- Finally, add the flour into the wet ingredients and whisk gently to prepare the batter.
How to bake cake in convection oven:
- Preheat the oven at 180 degrees after placing the low baking rack inside the oven.
- Meanwhile, heat a pan with butter in medium flame.
- Stir in demerara sugar and prepare the syrup.
- Now place the pineapple slices & cherries over the syrup.
- Cook them for a few minutes until the fruit slices are nicely coated in the syrup and remove the pan from heat.
- Pour the syrup into a 9″ round baking dish and arrange the pineapple slices & cherries as shown below.
- Spoon the cake batter over the syrup slowly without disturbing the arrangement of fruit slices.
- Place the cake dish inside the oven on top of the rack and bake for 40 minutes.
- Remove from oven when a toothpick inserted comes out clean and leave aside until it cools down.
- Run a knife around the cake to loosen it before inverting onto a serving plate.
- Slice the pineapple cake and serve warm or at room temperature.
Tips & Tweaks:
- If you use fresh pineapple, you may have to cook the slices in syrup little longer.
- You can replace demerara sugar with any other sugar or jaggery.
- Generally, fruit cakes taste more delicious when served with syrup, so you can keep aside the syrup (about 50 ml) after the fruit slices are sautéed in butter-syrup.
- We can also enhance the fruity flavor by adding finely chopped pineapple (fresh/ canned) into cake batter.