Kitchen Detail: Upside-Down Everything

These are the books that have inspired Nancy Pollard. / Image on the front, from iStock.

By Nancy Pollard

After owning one of the best cooking stores in the US for 47 years—La Cuisine: The Cook’s Resource, in Alexandria, Virginia—Nancy Pollard now writes Kitchen Detail, a blog about food in all its aspects—recipes, film, books, travel, superior sources and food-related issues. She and her husband, the Resident Wine Maniac, have recently moved to Italy.

The KD version of the Bravetart pineapple upside-down cake.

LIFE HAS BEEN upside-down for a few years now, ever since the pandemic first hit us, giving me the inspiration to talk about Upside-Down Cakes. These uniquely American creations have origins untraceable to immigrant communities in the US; this dessert is unrelated to Tarte Tatin from France, and even our German Upside-Down Cake is not German. In reading Stella Parks’s cookbook, Bravetart, in which she writes succinctly about the history of various American iconic desserts and snacks (and has quite a few outstanding recipes on her subjects), I discovered a lot about Oreos, Boston Cream Pie and Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. Her version of that last, with its cutouts of fresh pineapple (instead of canned circles) and her coconut-milk-based cake layer, is really good. (I used my Hammer Song leaf-shape cutters instead of a star cutter, above left.) Fascinating to learn that traditional Pineapple Upside- Down Cake, replete with red cherries in the middle of a wheel of canned pineapple, actually came from a cleverly designed piece of marketing to make greater use of a glut of this canned fruit in the US during the early part of the 20th century. Madison Avenue meets Hawaii!

Our Upside-Down Heritage

Cakes in which the bottom becomes the top have been around since the  Middle Ages. But those done in a skillet, usually with legs (they were called spiders) over an open fire became common in American cooking in the late 19th century. What many of us grew up with in the US, though, was the result of the marketing genius of James Dole, president of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. (The rapacious history of the pineapple companies in Hawaii makes absorbing and cringeworthy reading.) Dole’s business needed to increase its export of canned pineapple to the mainland,

A 1940 upside-down-cake ad found on Pinterest.

so in 1925, the company sponsored a recipe contest using its canned pineapple. There was an astonishing number of submissions—60,000—and of that total, more than 2,500 were for pineapple upside-down cake. Dole had found the sweet spot. He advertised heavily. Recipe booklets were published, and radio programs geared to housewives filled the airwaves with this cake. As a side note to the upside-down cake, the tradition of a ham festooned with canned pineapple circles, once again with a cherry in the middle, also came out of this marketing ploy. Later, with the development of cake mixes, one could simply grab a can of Dole pineapple, a box of cake mix, and a jar of cherries the color of a traffic light, and this startling-looking dessert blossomed.

Other Possibilities

This may be my favorite cake batter for an upside- down cake. It is from Gourmet’s Sweets, published in 1998. While it seems that I flog the books published by the old Gourmet magazine relentlessly, I have found (and so have other KD readers) that they are an incredible resource for truly delicious recipes. Plus, you have marvelous photos from Romulo Yanes and others, which just suck you in. Sometimes I just pick a year and look through the photos and the recipes all nicely categorized as a nice cap to bedtime reading.

Not all restaurant-cheffy cookbooks have a preponderance of workable recipes. I know not to expect a perfect score from them, but I do hope for some alignment. And this book provides that alignment. It was co-written by Cathal Armstrong, the former chef-owner of Restaurant Eve in my old Alexandria, Virginia,  neighborhood of make-believe, and David Hagedorn, who was the chef-owner of Trumpets in DC and now writes about dining (and sometimes really funny anecdotes about manners and grammar). Anyone could tell my high ranking of My Irish Table by its stained pages, some of them stuck together from flipping back and forth while working on a dish. This is my favorite version of Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. It’s eggy, rather than claggy (an apt expression I have picked up from The Great British Bake Off). It was a hit when Armstrong came to the La Cuisine shop for an author event. This version was dreamed up by Cathal when his sister and her family came to his house for dinner. Do fold the small amount of flour in by hand, and make sure the caramelized pineapple base is totally cool before you top it with this custard-like batter.

The KD version of Red Truck Bakery Pear Gingerbread Upside-Down Cake with spice ice cream (KD recipe).

Brian Noyes is one those “lucky ones” people imagine to have effortlessly and successfully  switched careers. But the truth is that while working very hard as an art director for several major publications in Washington DC, Brian baked on the side, graduated from the professional baking program of L’Académie de Cuisine, then  packed up his baked goods on the weekend and drove to a farmers market near a farmhouse he and his husband owned. (He bought the red truck, by the way, from fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger.)  It was not until a few years later that he realized his hard-won dream and opened Red Truck Bakery in Warrenton, Virginia. He has since opened a larger one in Marshall, and either one is a perfect destination for a Northern Virginia road trip. If you love to bake, Red Truck Bakery Cookbook is for you. It is  packed with Brian’s very carefully designed, seductively photographed riffs on American cakes, pies, cookies, and breads (with a couple of twists on French ones and a sweet-potato homage to the Italian panettone). This gingery upside-down cake is perfect for pears that I have left out too long.