My Pineapple Rum Cake starts with my fave sour cream pound cake batter but I add a pineapple upside down topping. After baking, I pour a butter rum syrup over it letting it soak in.
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How to Make Pineapple Rum Cake
Cake Prep:
- Preheat and Prep: Heat the oven to 350°F and grease a 12-cup bundt pan.
- Butter and Sugar: Whip butter for 2 minutes, add sugar, and mix until fluffy.
- Add Eggs: Incorporate eggs one at a time, mixing well.
- Dry Ingredients: On low speed, slowly add flour, salt, sour cream, pineapple, and vanilla. Mix just until combined.
Assemble:
- Butter and Sugar Base: In the bundt pan, layer melted butter, brown sugar, pineapple rings, and cherries.
- Add Batter: Pour batter over and smooth out.
Bake:
- Bake for 70-80 minutes. Let it cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto a plate.
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Rum Syrup:
- Cook: Add all the ingredients to a pot, reducing over medium-high heat for 5 minutes.
- Cool and Pour: Let it cool for 10 minutes, poke the cake, then pour the syrup over.
Pineapple Rum Cake Recipe
A homemade buttery sour cream pound cake is enhanced with sweet tropical pineapple flavor and a rum syrup. The gorgeous pineapple upside down topping makes it a showstopper!
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Servings: 16 servings
Ingredients
For the Cake Batter
- 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter room temperature
- 2 3/4 cups granulated sugar
- 5 large eggs room temperature
- 3 cups sifted cake flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1/4 cup crushed pineapple
- 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
For the Top of Cake Assembly
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter melted
- 1/3 cup light brown sugar packed
- 6 whole pineapple rings
- 6 maraschino cherries
For the Rum Syrup
- 1/2 cup rum
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp salted butter melted
- 2 tbsp pineapple juice
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
To make the cake
- Start by preheating oven to 350 degrees and spraying a 12 cup bundt pan with nonstick spray or grease pan (make sure you really prepare your pan well to insure no sticking for this cake).
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the butter for 2 minutes on high speed.
- Slowly add the granulated sugar. Mix together for an additional 5 minutes, until very pale yellow and fluffy.
- Add the eggs 1 at a time, combining well after each addition and scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.
- Turn your mixer down to its lowest speed and slowly add the flour in 2 batches. Add the salt. Be careful not to overbeat. Add the sour cream, crushed pineapple and vanilla extract. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and mix the batter until just combined. Be careful not to overmix.
To assemble with top of cake
- To assemble cake, pour melted butter in the bottom of the sprayed pan then sprinkle the butter with brown sugar.
- Line the bottom of the pan with the pineapple rings and add 1 cherry to the center of each pineapple ring.
- Evenly pour cake batter over pineapples and bake for 70-80 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out mostly clean but still moist.
- Allow cake to rest for 10 minutes then poke holes on the bottom of the cake and add half of the rum syrup allowing it to really soak in.
For the Rum Syrup
- Towards the end of baking, in a small pot set over medium heat, combine all the ingredients and cook over medium-high heat.
- Reduce mixture by about a third and thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool for 10 minutes.
- Finally poke the top and sides of the cake and pour remaining syrup over cake and allow to seep in then cool.
Video
Notes
Recipe Tip: This cake tastes great warm before the syrup from the brown sugar and pineapple settles so allow this cake to cool somewhat and then serve warm if you like.
Also make sure you refrigerate the cake due to the fruit in this cake. Wait until cakes comes to room temperature.
Nutrition
Calories: 524kcal | Carbohydrates: 68g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 24g | Saturated Fat: 14g | Cholesterol: 112mg | Sodium: 194mg | Potassium: 113mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 50g | Vitamin A: 800IU | Vitamin C: 3.1mg | Calcium: 42mg | Iron: 0.6mg
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Recipe Help
- Room temp: Make sure your butter and eggs are room temp before mixing your batter. This will ensure all of your ingredients blend well together making the batter smooth.
- Grease your pan well: Because we are adding a pineapple upside down topping, we want our baked cake to come out clean. So I like to use my cake release so the cake doesn’t stick.
- Don’t overmix: Make sure you don’t keep mixing once you add your dry ingredients. This can make your cake heavy and dense.
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Will be making this for Christmas. Thank you very much. God bless you and your family.
What can you substitute rum with if you don’t drink alcohol and liquor.
Maybe rum extract & increase pineapple juice. I don’t drink either lol.
The alcohol cooks out
Looks Delish gonna try it for Christmas but Iwould like to add pecans so how could I incorporate it into the cake??? Plez dont laugh about the question I’m not a Baker but will luv to learn…Also where did you get your baking pan and what kind is it???
You can add pecans to the bottom of the pan when you place the pineapple slices down. I would fill them in wherever there is space. Also we don’t laugh at anyone here. This is a safe space. It is a 12 cup bundt pan which you can grab anywhere nowadays.
How do you substitute all purpose flour for cake flour?
For every cup of all purpose flour, You would remove 2 tablespoons of flour and replace with cornstarch then sift three times. That is your replacement.
Can you make this with pineapple flavored rum?
You sure can.
This cake just didn’t have the flavor I thought it would..cake is perfectly soft and moist and came out of the pan perfect. J
Soooo ….my grandmother loves sour cream pound cake and pineapple upside down cake so when I saw this I thought it’s going to be a winner. The flavor of the cake and glaze were perfect (I used spiced rum), but I did not like the way it looked it came out entirely too dark on one side .
First time ever making pineapple upside down cake and it was FABULOUS! I followed your instructions exactly. Thanks so much for the perfect recipe!
Hooray I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
Heading over to check out book, looks interesting! This cake sounds delicious, can t wait to try! Thanks for recipe!
I tried this recipe for the Christmas holiday, and it turned out marvelous! Thanks for the recipe!!!