Vintage Recipe: 1974 Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Today I’m featuring a vintage dessert favorite of my husband’s because his birthday is coming up.

(I promise that not every vintage recipe featured here will be a dessert – but is anyone really complaining?)

I say it’s a favorite of his, although he would have not eaten it for the past 40+ years of marriage because I never attempted it. The directions seemed too complicated and time-consuming.

When I questioned him about how it became a ‘favorite,’ he could only recall his mother making it a couple of times while he was growing up. But on those occasions (birthday special?), it was so delicious that it stuck in his memory.

I can accept the fact that a foodie ‘favorite’ can become one simply because it was served during a special occasion and/or because it tasted delicious.

(My one example of a food I would NEVER consider a favorite is gooseberry pie. It was served once at a family reunion and all I remember is that it was gray and tasted horrible. To make matters worse, my kids ate gooseberry pie when they were young when their grandparents ordered it for them at a restaurant and they liked it – traitors!)

Getting back to the favorite dessert of my husband’s. It is Pineapple Upside-Down Cake.

I found a recipe for this in a 1974 copy of a McCall’s soft cover recipe book. Inside the front cover is printed: “McCall’s Dessert Discoveries’ by the Food Editors of McCall’s. It was published by Advance Publishers in Orlando, FL.

I wonder if this is the same company that produced clothing patterns which I used often while learning to sew in the 1970s.

This particular volume, along with two dozen other paperback cookbooks produced by McCall’s during the same time, were for sale recently at a church rummage sale.

These cookbooks books were in excellent condition and you can look forward to seeing other recipes from them in the future.

I will print the recipes exactly as they are in the cookbooks with some of my notes/tips at the end.

Old-Fashioned Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

4 eggs, separated

½ c. butter or margarine

1 c. light-brown sugar, firmly packed

1 can (1 lb., 4 ½ oz.) pineapple slices, drained

½ c. coarsely chopped pecans

10 maraschino cherries, drained and halved

1 c. sifted cake flour

1 t. baking powder

¼ t. salt

1 c. granulated sugar

1 T. butter or margarine, melted

1 t. almond extract

¾ c. heavy cream, whipped

1. Preheat oven to 325 F.
2. In large bowl allow egg whites to warm to room temperature – about 1 hour.
3. In a 10-inch heavy skillet with a heat-resistant handle, melt ½ c. butter over very low heat. Remove from heat.
4. Sprinkle brown sugar over butter. Arrange pineapple slices to cover bottom of skillet. Distribute pecans and cherries around pineapple; set aside.  
5. Sift flour with baking powder and salt.
6. At high speed, beat egg whites just until soft peaks form when beater is slowly raised. Add granulated sugar gradually; beat well after each addition. Continue beating until stiff peaks form.
7. In small bowl of electric mixer at high speed, beat egg yolks until very thick and yellow.
8. With a wire whisk or rubber scraper, using an under-and-over motion, gently fold egg yolks and flour mixture into whites until combined.
9. Fold in 1 T. butter and the almond extract.
10. Spread batter evenly over pineapple in skillet. Bake 35 minutes or until surface springs back when gently pressed with fingertip.
11. Loosen edge of cake; let stand 5 minutes. Invert on serving plate. Serve warm with whipped cream.

MAKES 8 SERVINGS

Kayleen’s notes:

I found out why they say to use 10 maraschino cherries – there are 10 pineapple slices in the size of can in the recipe.

I just realized in re-reading the recipe that I forgot to halve the cherries, but I think they look better whole, don’t you?

Full disclosure: I could not get the egg whites to stiffen to a peak. I ran my 20+-year-old Sunbeam Mixmaster mixer at its highest speed for at least 10 minutes to no avail.

Fearing the now-warm machine would blow up, I proceeded with the next step of adding the sugar and decided John would have to eat it without the volume the egg whites’ peaks would have added.

He liked the cake very much and said he was not disappointed in its lack of height.

As for inverting the cake – I forgot to place the empty baking sheet on top of the cake to make for an easy flip. Instead, I tried grabbing the corners of the parchment paper and flipping.

It was an episode you might have seen on ‘I Love Lucy.’

But at least half of it landed right so I am sharing it with you.

Perhaps I’ve been watching too many episodes of ‘The Great British Baking Show.’ Or not enough.

Last note: We ate it warm with low-fat vanilla yogurt — it’s our go-to option instead of whipped cream.

Let me know if you make this cake. I think it is a moderate level since it also means cooking on the stove. But, if you want an adventure, give it a go!

Happy dining!

**

Vintage Find of the Week:

The pretty plate holding my cake is one I found at a thrift store from the Haviland & Co. Limoges (Haviland, France).

Have I said how much I like thrift stores and rummage sales? Love them!

#PineappleUpsideDownCake #VintageEats #Vintagerecipe #Vintagecookbook #cookyourbooks2025 #cookingfrommyshelf #cookbookchallenge #cookbooks #vintagerecipes #BakingFromScratch #BakingLove #Recipes #Food #Recipe #Cooking #Homemadefood #HealthyEating #DessertGoals #SweetTooth