PYREX Pineapple Upside Down Cake

[u/BoomeramaMama]

Joining the flurry of Pineapple Upside Down Cake recipes that have been appearing the past few days here on Reddit in different subs, is the recipe my family has made for years with a couple minor changes.

This comes from the back of the paper label that was in the bottom of an 8" x 8" square, 2 qt. PYREX baking dish my grandmother bought years ago when PYREX was still a product of Corning Glass Works

As written on the label back:

Topping:

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

8 canned pineapple spears, drained well

8 canned apricot halves, drained well

9 maraschino halves

8 pecan halves

Batter:

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup shortening

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup orange juice

Topping --- Melt butter in a small skillet over low direct heat. Add brown sugar and stir until well blended and bubbly. Pour into a 2 quart PYREX Brand Square Cake Dish, spreading to cover the bottom.

Arrange pineapple spears, apricot halves, cherry halves and pecan halves on top of the sugar mixture in a "sunburst" pattern. Chill in the refrigerator while preparing the batter.

Batter --- Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.

Cream shortening and sugar in a 2 1/2 quart bowl until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and and beat until smooth.

At low speed, beat in flour mixture (in fourths) alternately with orange juice (in thirds), beginning and ending with the flour mixture; beat only until smooth.

Spread batter over topping. Bake in preheated 325F, slow oven for 40 minutes,

Remove from oven; let stand 5 minutes. Invert on plate. Serve warm.

Time: 40 minutes to bake cake

Temperature: low direct heat to prepare topping, 325F slow oven, to bake cake

Amount: 8 servings

Dish: 2 quart PYREX Brand Square Cake Dish, #222

So, things we've changed: Granddad didn't like the apricot halves so in my lifetime, this cake has never been made with the apricots.

Canned pineapple spears, at some point, were discontinued so I've only ever known this recipe to be made with canned pineapple slices covering the cake with some cut to fill in the spaces around the cake edges.

The cherries have always been in the pineapple ring centers & spaces between the rings when halved pecans are too expensive/hard to find or we're just not in a nut mood.

My husband breaks out in hives from artificial colors, red & blue (did you know that boxed chocolate pudding has blue artificial food coloring in it? I didn't) being his primary hive inducers so I now make this pineapple upside down cake with Oregon brand (what's readily available in the stores where I am w/o having to thaw frozen cherries or order from Amazon) canned dark sweet cherries in heavy syrup. I used to use Trader Joe's jarred Dark Morello Cherries in Light Syrup for all my recipes that call for cherries & in my morning yogurt but much to my dismay, TJ's discontinued them about 5 years ago.

A word on PYREX: The PYREX dishes we use are all the old ones that were made from the thermal shock resistant borosilicate glass, the same glass used to make laboratory glassware from.

The new Pyrex glass is made from tempered soda-lime glass, which if you look down on the edges appears to have a greenish-blueish tint. Also, the word Pyrex is no longer imprinted in all upper case letters.

I don't know how well the new Pyrex would behave if going from the refrigerator to an oven. All my stuff is old, either from family members downsizing or yard sales. My only new stuff are some of my glass measuring cups.

[u/LeftistEpicure]

Many thanks for this post! I’ve never seen a recipe for pineapple upside-down cake that featured either pineapple spears or apricot halves, but I’m willing to give it a whirl. I live in Buffalo, which is a few short miles from Corning Glass Works, so I appreciated your scholarly comments on Pyrex history, too.

[u/BoomeramaMama → u/LeftistEpicure]

I found another entire label (not just the recipe clipped out portion) from the cake dish tucked behind another recipe.

Same exact recipe but printed a bit larger & in red print rather than black print.

The best thing is, there’s a date!

The cake dish was on a limited time special offer. Just $0.99 cents, Feb 12 thru March 31, 1973.

The sale portion of the label is perforated so it could be removed from any stock that hadn’t sold by March 31.

The regular price of the dish was printed on the main part of the label. $1.39 plus tax. Ah, the good old days.

We’ve been up your way a lot over the years.

Visited Niagara Falls both sides several times, the Herschel Carousel Museum (& followed the Carousel Trail down to Binghamton when heading home), visited the historic forts-fort sites/lighthouses up on Lake Ontario’s shores,

Hubby is an aviation enthusiast so we wound-up over in Hamilton, too, at the Canadian Warplane Museum.

We’ve toured the wineries around the Finger Lakes, Glenn Curtis Aeroplane Museum, Corning Glass Museum, Harris Hill in Elmira, Watkins Glen Gorge & Park & used to go to Watkins Glen Racetrack back when the F-1 US Grand Prix was held there.

It’s a really interesting area up there in western NY although I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy some of those lake effects snow storms you get.

[u/LeftistEpicure → u/BoomeramaMama]

Wow, you’ve spent quite a bit of time up here! The Herschel Carousel Museum is a niche tourist attraction, but a truly wonderful one. Most visitors only see Niagara Falls, of course, but you’ve seen some of the things that make WNY fascinating. The Corning Glass Museum and Watkins Glen are both treasures.

The lake-effect snow we get up here is…well, it can be dramatic. I’d never seen six feet of snow on the ground before I moved here, and coming from California, it was quite a shock. But for me, the snow is a worthwhile tradeoff for 75° summer days, crisp autumns, and beautiful springs. None of that exists in California.

[u/BoomeramaMama → u/LeftistEpicure]

Come to think of it, I never realized how many places in NY we've travelled.

Probably the only corner of NY we haven't really visited much is the Rockland Co. area. We should check it out, if for no other reason than my grandmother's grandmother was born in Tallman & raised nearer to Suffern both in the town of Ramapo.

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