Mahni's Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Hi hi! I've been gone for awhile. Sorry for all the delays. I had my sister Beah, nephew Dylan, and the infamous sous chef Mahni visiting me for awhile; they just left Chez Nemmie to head back home. We took trips to the KC Zoo, downtown Lawrence, hit The Merc to get Mahni some baking essentials, did some shopping in KC, the kids braved the T-Rex restaurant for an evening...

We even got the sweet babies' pictures taken by the extremely talented Josh Solar while they were here :)

Photos courtesy of Josh Solar Photo, 2008

You can take a peek at the rest of the pictures if you click right here! Josh and Jenny are fantastic, so a quick plug: if you are in the KC area, you should absolutely give them a call when you need some family (or wedding, or graduation, or baby...) photos.

Anyhoo: while in town, Mahni made sure to teach me her famous Pineapple Upside Down Cake recipe. We accidentally doubled the butter, which seeped lovingly into the cake (and would have made Paula Deen proud), but trust me: in its original form you have a sweet, pineapple-y cake with a crunchy sugary crust, and caramelized pineapples to boot on top. Mmmm.

Mahni's Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Ingredients:
1/2 c. butter or margarine
1 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1 can (20 oz.) pineapple slices, juice drained and reserved
1 pkg. Duncan Hines® Moist Deluxe® Pineapple Supreme Cake Mix
3 eggs
Juice from canned pineapple + water, to equal 1 c.
1/3 c. oil

Preheat oven to 350F.

For topping, melt butter in the preheated oven in a 9X13 pan. Once butter is melted, remove from the oven. Sprinkle brown sugar in the pan over the butter.

Arrange pineapple slices in the pan, over the brown sugar. Set aside.

For cake, combine cake mix, eggs, pineapple juice/water, and oil in large mixing bowl. Beat at medium speed with electric mixer for 2 minutes. Pour batter evenly over fruit in pan.

Bake at 350 F for 45-55 min. or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Invert onto serving plate.

The End.

We love going to the Zoo.