Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

I was inspired to try baking this cake for my mom after watching last Sunday's episode of Desperate Housewives. The episode was not about baking a pineapple upside-down cake for mom, I just saw that the cake looked pretty and I had never tried it before.

The recipe I picked was from:

Betty Crocker Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Ingredients

1/4

cup butter or margarine 

2/3

cup packed brown sugar

9

slices pineapple in juice (from 14-oz can), drained

9

maraschino cherries without stems, if desired 

1 1/3

cups Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour

1

cup granulated sugar 

1/3

cup shortening

1 1/2

teaspoons baking powder

1/2

teaspoon salt

3/4

cup milk 

1

egg 

As usual, I do not like my cake too sweet so I cut down the brown sugar in half. I used light brown sugar. I also melt the butter and light brown sugar together on the stove instead of melting the butter in the oven then sprinkling the brown sugar over the butter, as stated on the recipe. I used electric mixer to cream shortening and sugar before adding eggs, then added milk and dry ingredients alternately, instead of just blending everything for 3.5 minutes as stated on the recipe. I used a springform pan instead of cake pan because I do not have any cake pan.

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a 9-inch round or square pan.
2. Measure 1 1/3 cup all purpose flour, 1 1/2 baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt into a bowl. Briefly mix with whisk or fork.
3. Rinse, drain and pat dry 7 slices of canned pineapples and 7 maraschino cherries (I do not like the syrup that the pineapple and cherries were drenched in) (Use 7 for round pan, 9 for square pan).
4. Melt 1/4 cup butter and 1/3 cup light brown sugar on a pan (Do not place plan directly on the fire. This will take only a short moment. Beware to not burn the sugar). Pour your melted butter and brown sugar into pan.
5. Arrange pineapple slices in pan, followed by cherries in the center of each pineapple slice.
6. Cream 1/3 cup vegetable shortening.
7. Add 1 cup granulated sugar into shortening. Continue creaming.
8. Add 1 egg. Beat well.
9. Pour 1/3 of dry ingredients into batter (refer step 2). Beat until dry ingredients are incorporated.
10. Pour 1/4 cup milk into batter. Beat until incorporated.
11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 twice.
12. Pour batter over pineapple and cherries.
13. Bake for 50 minutes.
14. Slightly run knife over sides of cake pan to loosen the cake.
15. Invert onto a cooling rack, let cake pan on for few minutes so the brown sugar mixture can seep into the cake.

Note: Good recipe (It is good instead of excellent because we cannot mix everything with the electric mixer at the same time or cake will come out 'overbeaten', in which it is soft and breaks very easily).