This review must start with a confession. I have never had pineapple upside down cake. This may seem crazy but let me explain. I have hated pineapple for a long time, the flavor and mouth feel didn’t appeal to me. However, sometime in the last year or two I woke up craving pineapple and suddenly found it extremely enjoyable. Taste buds work in mysterious ways but I found myself with a new fruit to enjoy and less fruit desserts to avoid. When I came across this box mix from Betty Crocker, I knew that with my new found enjoyment of pineapple, we had to give it a try.
Opening this box up, I was pleasantly surprised to find it contains the needed pineapple and doesn’t include fresh fruit as a required ingredient. Inside the box there is a can of pineapple bits, a cake mix powder, and a topping mix. The required ingredients to prepare this dessert are water, butter, and an egg. I found it surprising there was no oil to be included in this cake mix as that is typical for a box mix cake and makes it really moist. Another difference from a normal cake mix is how many step there are as you have to prepare the pineapple topping and cake separately.
This recipe starts by melting the butter in an 8×8 square pan. My oven was preheated so I placed the pan in the oven until the butter melted completely and it worked perfectly. Next, you pour the topping mix on top of the melted butter. This topping mix tasted and looked like it was just brown sugar which makes sense as an ingredient needed to make the pineapple topping however I feel it is unnecessary to refer to it as a “topping mix” if there are no additional ingredients. I was expecting flavoring or spices but nothing like that was added. After the topping mix, you pour the canned pineapple into the pan without straining any of the juices. The small can covered the pan nicely and evenly. I pressed the pineapple into the topping a little bit to make sure it was all secure.
With the topping ready, I moved onto the cake batter. I poured the cake mix into my bowl and it was lumpy. I smashed the lumps up and then added in the water and the egg. Unfortunately, it was still extremely lumpy. I mixed this batter for what felt like forever and still couldn’t get it to be smooth. At this point I checked the expiration date and found this mix was considered expired about two weeks ago. I knew I’d had this mix in my pantry for awhile but I was surprised it had expired so soon. I am not worried about the expiration date as it will all be baked at a high temp however it is a good explanation as to why it is so lumpy. I find that older cake mixes get moisture into them and clump up but I haven’t found it to affect the quality. I would suggest that if you have an old cake mix, put it through a sifter first to make your life easier.
I poured my lumpy cake batter over the pineapple topping and put the pan into the oven to bake. Betty Crocker’s recipe called for 40-45 minutes of baking but due to our history with this brand, I checked on the cake at 35 minutes. Surprise, surprise, the cake was perfectly cooked at only 35 minutes 5-10 before recommended. One the cake comes out of the oven, you have to immediately flip it over onto a serving tray, or a plate in my case, and remove the pan.
At this point, the cake smelled heavenly and like the caramelization had worked it’s magic. It wasn’t super even in color and some of the pineapple had stuck to the pan but for the most part, I feel like this worked exactly like it was supposed to. The cake itself wasn’t very flavorful, the flavor was primarily the caramelized pineapple on the top and this is most likely their intention but I feel like the cake should have a nice vanilla flavor to accent the pineapple topping, or even a pineapple flavor to heighten the flavor of the topping. This cake was super soft and most, and really enjoyable to eat. The baked pineapple’s texture meshed well with the cake. This box mix really simplified the process of a pineapple upside down cake and provided a solid dessert. I would eat this again.
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