Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Taste: Sweet; Technique: Baking; Time: One hour; Difficulty: Advanced.

Step-by-Step Instructions for Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Peel and core the pineapple, slice thinly, soak in salted water, then drain.

In a non-stick pan, caramelize the brown sugar over low heat until it turns amber.

Add 15g of water, stir quickly.

Add butter and stir until melted.

Immediately add the pineapple and mix.

Add rum for flavor.

Continue cooking until the pineapple softens, remove from heat, drain the juice, let it cool, and reserve the juice.

Crack the eggs into a clean, dry, oil-free large bowl, add all the sugar and water, mix well with a hand whisk.

Place the bowl over cool water in a pot, heat over low heat, stirring constantly until the egg mixture and sugar are evenly mixed. Test the temperature by hand, when the egg mixture is warm but not exceeding 40 degrees, remove from heat.

Start beating with an electric mixer at medium speed until the egg mixture turns white, forms a ribbon when the whisk is lifted, and the trace disappears within 2 seconds. Then switch to low speed for 2 minutes to remove air bubbles.

Continue beating until the egg mixture volume remains the same, but the bubbles become very fine, the color turns white, and the egg mixture does not disappear when lifted with the whisk. This indicates the eggs are fully beaten.

At this point, preheat the oven, sift the flour into the beaten egg mixture in three parts. After each sift, use a rubber spatula to fold from the bottom up to roughly mix the flour and egg mixture. Continue sifting the remaining flour and folding until fully combined and smooth.

In another small bowl, mix corn oil and milk with a hand whisk until well combined.

Pour the oil-milk mixture into the cake batter and thoroughly mix with a rubber spatula, making sure to work quickly.

The batter will be noticeably thinner than before and should be used immediately to prevent deflating.

Arrange the pineapple in the bottom of a springform pan, covering it completely.

Pour the cake batter into the pan until it is 80% full.

Baking time: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, bake at 170 degrees Celsius on the middle rack for about 36 minutes. Immediately invert the cake onto a cooling rack after removing it from the silicone mold.

Brush some of the filtered caramelized pineapple juice over the pineapple slices.