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An upside-down cake is a cake that is baked in a single pan with its toppings at the bottom of the pan, hence "upside-down". Then, when removed from the oven, the upside-down preparation is turned over onto a serving plate, thus righting it, and serving it right-side up. The idea of cooking a cake upside down, is an old technique that started centuries ago when cakes were cooked in cast iron skillets. It was easy for cook to add fruit and sugar in the bottom of the pan and cake batter on top and put it over the fire to cook. Then flipping it over onto a plate was a natural way to show the pretty fruit and let it run into the cake as well.
So, when you look at it, what is underneath is important.
We left some swag for fellow cachers..... a Geodog paw, a dinosaur, a seashell and a purple turtle.
Sliced pineapple, butter, and sugar are placed on the bottom of the pan before the batter is poured in, so that they form a baked-on topping after the cake is inverted.
The term “upside down cake” first began appearing in the late 1800s. Up until that time, this type of cake was referred to as skillet cakes. This was because ovens were not common or reliable. Skillet cakes were born of practicality. Cakes were made in the popular cast-iron skillets on top of the stove. Inverting a cake to reveal a topping was very popular as far back as the Middle Ages.The first upside-down cakes were not even made with pineapple, but with seasonal fruits such as apples and cherries, as canned pineapple had not been invented yet. Canned pineapple manufacturing didn’t begin until 1901 when Jim Dole established the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now Dole Company) and began producing and marketing mass quantities of canned pineapple.
In 1925, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company sponsored a contest calling for pineapple recipes with judges from the Fannie Farmer’s School, Good Housekeeping, and McCall’s Magazine on the judging panel. It is said that 2,500 of the 60,000 submissions were recipes for pineapple upside-down cake. The company decided to run an ad about the flood of pineapple upside-down cake recipes it had received, and the cake’s popularity increased!
Pineapple upside-down cakes began appearing in magazines, cookbooks, and advertisements. In the 1950s and 60s a pineapple upside down cake was the culmination of many dinner parties.
And remember, before you can log your find, you have to find your log!
This geocache has been placed with permission of the property owner.