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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Pineapple Rum Cake Ingredients
For the Cake Batter:
- Unsalted Butter: Make sure this is room temp. You can grab salted here too. Just leave the salt out.
- Granulated Sugar: You can also use a light brown sugar here too.
- Eggs: Make sure these are room temperature.
- Cake Flour: Sift this for a nice crumb. I don’t believe in using all-purpose flour as a sub here since the cake will be heavier.
- Salt: I use kosher here. Table salt is fine but use a little less.
- Sour Cream: Plain greek yogurt is also a good substitute.
- Crushed Pineapple: If you don’t like the texture, you can also just use a little pineapple extract to give the flavor.
- Pure Vanilla Extract: Make sure you use the real stuff and not the artificial.
For the Top of Cake Assembly:
- Melted Unsalted Butter: Salted is fine here too.
- Light Brown Sugar: Dark brown is a good swap here as well.
- Pineapple Rings: Use fresh or even canned that are drained.
- Maraschino Cherries: You can leave these out if you want.
For the Rum Syrup:
- Rum: Feel free to grab anyone you want here.
- Granulated Sugar: Light brown sugar is fine here.
- Melted Butter: Unsalted or salted works great.
- Pineapple Juice: If you use canned, just save the juice from the can for this.
- Pure Vanilla Extract: Just a little adds a nice touch.
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.
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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.
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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Hi,
I plan on making this tomorrow – but noticed no liquid per se in the recipe. Did I miss something?
Am I to drain the crushed pineapple or include the pineapple juice?
You can leave a little pineapple juice in it. It won’t really impact the recipe that much since it will only be about a 1/2-1 tsp of additional liquid.
Loved this cake! It was all gone, there were no leftovers.
My syrup never really got thickened, so I served it on the side. The next time I plan on poking holes in the bottom of the cake before inverting it and pouring over the cake that way.
This sounds so amazing !! Must have this recipe !!
I did like this cake but did change the recipe a bit. Only because my daughter was wanting something specific.
I did use sifted all purpose flour. 3 teaspoons of baking powder. Added 1/2 can coconut milk and 1 teaspoon almond extract. I also put flakes coconut in the bottom of the pan with the sliced pineapple. The cake turned out amazing not too dense! I will keep this recipe in my favorites! I only changed this recipe because I was not wanting something quite so dense and heavy! Thank you for this cake!! 🙂
I’m going to make it for a friend it looks really good.
This looks amazing!!
I’ve made this several times and it is always a hit! Love this cake!
Did you measure the flour before or after sifting?
Hi, I tried the recipe, but the cake came out so super dense. I only substituted the cake flour for all-purpose (is that where I went wrong?). The recipe did not specify self-rise cake flour from plain and I noticed no leavening agent. What did I do? Thank you so much. I really want to get this recipe correct.
Hi Joni, that is definitely where you went wrong. They are not equal substitutions at all. The cake flour truly lightens the texture of this cake because it produces less gluten due to its protein amount. All purpose flour has a higher amount of gluten production which is why you cannot equally substitute them and have the same results I’m afraid.
Hi, I want to use this recipe to make mini pineapple upside down cakes using a cast iron mini cake pan. Would I need to do anything differently? Thank you in advance 🙂
Actually if you want to make mini pineapple upside down cakes, I would suggest this recipe since it is the classic way with a cast iron skillet: https://grandbaby-cakes.com/pineapple-upside-down-cake/
Do we need to grease and flour the pan or just grease only is sufficient for ease?
Grease and flour if you are going old school for sure!