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. It’s so delish, and a nice spin on a classic rum cake when you want a little something different.
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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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This was the absolute most beautiful pound cake I have baked yet! It was a request from one of my sisters and she loved it. The top was a bit hard to cut, but they were able to eat the cake. Maybe I cooked the glaze too long? How do I enter the picture in here?
I made this for Easter this year. It was amazing! Followed the recipe to a T, except that I used Mailbu Black for the rum sauce. It was the perfect little touch of coconut. Thank you for a great recipe!
This might be new favorite cake….and, I knew it would be amazing once I tasted the batter….
My only hiccup was the rum syrup part that you had to pour over. It took a little longer for it to thicken….I let it sit and then reheated it..which I think made it too thick. However, it’s still a really good cake to me. And, if I were making this for adults only I would just add a little straight rum after the rum sauce.
My family enjoyed the cake. It was a great way to combine two of their favorite dessert. Pound and pineapple upside down cake .
Absolutely amazing! Lots of work so it’s for special occasions. I have to hand-mix everything if I want it fluffy. I somehow over-mix it in the Kitchen Aid, making it dense.
I was really looking forward to this – it looks amazing and so did mine when I made it. But when I cut it to serve, the cake was SO dense and almost seemed like there was too much butter in it. It almost tasted as though it didn’t cook enough but it was in fact cooked. Not sure if I did something wrong or if the cake is supposed to be this heavy.
Wonderful thank you so much for this recipe
For the batter, Is it 1.5 cups of butter? In the video it appears to be 3 half sticks (3/4 cups)
Nope its 1 1/2 cups of butter.
I made this cake over the summer and absolutely loved it. The cake flour was a bit thick for me. What would you recommend as a substitute for a less dense cake?
That is strange since cake flour makes a cake less dense and heavy because it creates less gluten in your cake versus an all purpose flour that would have given you that heavier cake. Are you sure you used cake flour? Maybe it was the brand?
Yes, I used Swan’s cake flour and I sifted through it too.
Possibly a dumb question, but did you measure three cups then sift, or did you sift then measure out three cups? I misread a recipe once where I was supposed to measure out the flour after I sifted and I measured then sifted and it was horribly dense. This recipe calls for flour after ita been sifted, maybe that was the mistake?
I made this recipe today
Wow great recipe and easy steps
Thanks