This soft, sweet cake makes a pretty addition to any post-dinner spread. The contrast between the golden pineapple slices, which grew in popularity after James Dole purchased nearly the entire island of Lanai in Hawaii to transform it into a pineapple farm in the 1920s, and the fiery red maraschino cherries, popularized in the post-Prohibition era after the cherries were stored in a sugar syrup instead of alcohol, catches my eye every time.
Ingredients
- 6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter
- ¾ cup packed light brown sugar
- 7–8 slices canned pineapple
- 14 maraschino cherries
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
- Pinch of kosher salt
- 1 large egg
- ½ cup buttermilk
- ⅓ cup sour cream
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon rum extract
How to Make It
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- In a small bowl, melt the butter in the microwave.
- Pour the melted butter evenly into a 9-inch springform cake pan set on top of a baking sheet.
- Sprinkle the brown sugar over the melted butter.
- Add 5 whole slices of pineapple in the pan.
- Halve 2 pineapple slices and place them between the whole slices.
- Place one cherry in the center cut-outs of both the whole and halved slices and in any outside gaps.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, cardamom, and salt.
- In a 2-cup liquid measuring cup, whisk together the egg, buttermilk, sour cream, vegetable oil, vanilla, and rum extract.
- Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and fold it in with a spatula just until combined. Do not overmix.
- Carefully pour the batter over the pineapple in the pan.
- Bake for 40 minutes, or until the cake is set and golden.
- Place the pan on a wire rack to cool for at least 30 minutes or longer before removing the springform pan ring and inverting onto a cake plate. Slice and serve.
