Jackson Jambalaya

Everyone over the age of 96 remembers the Parade Magazine supplement from the Sunday Paper, back in the day. You don't? Then you must be younger than 95. Sorry you missed "the good old days" when Elvis, Chubby Checker, and Herman and the Hermits were Happening things. Probably means you also don't remember the Sock Hop at the Wahabi Shriner's Temple, or the Wagon Wheel Club above the Mayflower Grill.

Back when I was just a young whippersnapper (in the 50s and 60s), during the perfect days of America before hundred-mile-away traveling "Select T-Ball League" games were a thing, Mom loved to read the Parade Magazine on Sunday. I can't remember ever seeing an article about T-Ball in it, but it was full of great articles about TV and Movie celebrities, light news, the latest recipes and, along with 8-10 pages of color cartoon strips, helped make the Sunday Newspaper special, unless Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean were on the tube, doing a Yankees Game. 

Wikipedia says the last issue of Parade was published on November 13, 2022. In its heyday (is that actually a word?), Parade was the most widely read magazine in the US, with a circulation of 32 million and a readership of 54.1 million.

At our house, we were fortunate, in that we got to enjoy many of the latest recipes, pulled straight from the pages of the cooking section of the Parade Magazine by mom. Those were the pre-BBC (Bell's Best Cookbook) days, and our family budget did not include money for cookbooks, so Parade was mom's go-to recipe source. Parade introduced us to all sorts of new tasty, sometimes exotic, eats, like Hamburger Meat Stroganoff, made with exotic ingredients like ground beef, Campbell's Mushroom Soup, actual mushrooms from a can, and onions, which went in every casserole ever made back then. It was cooked in mom's cast iron skillet and served over rice at our house, since noodles were hardly ever in the pantry. After the first attempt at sticking to the Parade recipe for stroganoff, mom dropped the tiny can of mushrooms, which were too expensive to add to the budget.

I don't remember when mom baked her first pineapple upside-down cake, but I do know the recipe came from the Parade Magazine, because I remember the Parade recipe page. ripped out and stored for future use in her loose filed, in no order, recipe file - kept in a cigar box in the drawer of the dining room China cabinet. No one smoked at our house, so I have no idea where the cigar box came from, but the cake recipe came from Parade and included a beautiful color photograph, pretty much exactly like the header one on this post. Just like the Stroganoff, Pineapple upside-down cake was cooked in her 10-inch cast iron skillet.

Here comes another useless daydream from ZeroBear - I'd give anything to still have the cigar box full of aggies and cat eyes I once had. Sadly, all of mine are now stored in Jars.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Ingredients:

Cake:

2 cups (390g) Martha White Self-Rising Flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs, room temp.
Juice from a 20 oz can of pineapple slices in 100% juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Pineapple Slice Layer:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup brown sugar
Maraschino cherries

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325F. 

Whisk flour and salt together and set aside. 

Drain 3/4 cup of pineapple juice from pineapple rings and set aside. For mine, that was almost exactly the amount of juice in the can. 

Lightly coat bottom and edges of a 10-inch cast iron skillet with butter.

Arrange the pineapple rings in skillet. 

In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add butter and mix on medium-low until softened. Slowly add sugar and beat until light and fluffy (about 7 minutes).

Add one egg at a time and beat it into the butter until fully incorporated before adding another.

Reduce speed to low. and add flour and pineapple juice. Alternate between adding a little flour, followed by adding a little pineapple juice, (flour, juice, flour, juice, flour), until all of the flour and pineapple juice have been added.

I had three pineapple rings left after placing the slices in the buttered skillet, so I cut those three slices into bits and mixed them into the batter at this point, mixing it long enough to break them up into small bits. Mixing both juice and pineapple bits into the batter gives the cake a really good pineapple flavor.

Beat in vanilla extract and set batter aside.

Add melted butter to the skillet, over the pineapple slices, then crumble 1/4 cup of brown sugar over the buttered slices. then place a maraschino cherry to the middle of each pineapple slice

Carefully spoon in batter, smooth it out evenly, and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. or until a toothpick inserted into the cake layer comes out clean. Use a sheet under the skillet while baking in the oven to keep any overflow of sugar that might cook out from messing up the oven.

Cool for 20 minutes then run a knife blade around the cake-to-skillet edge to loosen the cake before flipping it onto a cake plate. Once plated, allow it to cool completely before slicing.

Enjoy

Our cake lasted covered on the counter just fine for the three days it took us to finish it. You might want to store your cake in the refrigerator if keeping ot around for longer than that.

Thanks for looking at my post.
God Bless You.