Alizé Gold Passion Pineapple Upside Down Cake

By Jaya Saxena October 25, 2012

There may come a time in your life when you have a bottle of the weirdest alcohol you can possibly imagine. Perhaps someone brought some Green Apple Vodka to your house dorm room, and it has somehow made it to the cabinets in the apartment you live in as a 26-year-old. Maybe you got some 99 Bananas to make one very specific shot at a very specific party and now the bottle is gathering dust. You may have even been totally qurious about Qream and what it can do for you. We’ve all been there.

I’m not going to even pretend to know what’s going on with liquor flavors these days. I saw Swedish Fish vodka in my liquor store the other day, which is just, I don’t know, Artificial Cherry Flavor Flavored Vodka? But waste not, want not. I mean, not that you particularly wanted that Cotton Candy vodka in the first place, and that “starving children in Africa” saying doesn’t exactly work here … whatever, let’s get rid of some gross liquor, okay? When life gives you 99 Bananas, make a cake? My god I’m drunk just thinking about this project.

Hopefully you’ve graduated from Boone’s up to Alizé, which is what we’ll be cooking with today.

First, preheat the oven to 350. Then take a can of pineapple rings and drain it of its juice. Replace that juice with Alizé Gold Passion, and let it marinate for, say, 15 minutes? That sounds good. Meanwhile, make your cake batter. I did this by combining 1 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp salt, 2 eggs, ⅔ cup sugar, and ¼ cup milk, but you can used whatever yellow cake recipe you have. Yes, that includes using a box mix. We’re making Alizé cake here #nojudgements.

Melt ⅔ cup butter (which is so much butter, you will be grossed out by this butter) and ½ cup dark brown sugar in a cast iron skillet. Do not even look at this mixture if you’re on a diet. When it starts bubbling, arrange however many pineapple slices you can fit into the pan, and add a maraschino cherry to the center of each one. I fit eight, leaving me with a few Alizé-soaked pineapple slices for snacking.

Taste your Alizé Gold Passion. Realizé it just tastes like a mimosa in a bottle. Keep drinking. I guess finding out you enjoy some of these ridiculous products is just a consequence of this project? Boo hoo.

Anyway, pour about ¼ cup of the Alizé over the bubbling butter-sugar-pineapple mixture, and let bubble for about 5 more minutes. Then, pour your cake batter over it, as evenly as possible but don’t stress about it, it’ll all settle and cook anyway. Pop the pan in the oven for about half an hour, or until the cake is golden and a knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.