Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
upside-down cake

upside-down cake

3 2.6
A cake you bake with fruit on the bottom then flip so it sits on top
  • noun
  • /ˈʌpˌsaɪdˈdaʊn keɪk/
translation icon : pastel invertido
  • I grew up with a fair amount of upside-down cake, but rarely did my mother (and therefore me) make fancy, two-layer cakes with real frosting, so I was a bit anxious about making the spice cake.
  • pineapple upside-down cake
  • upside-down cake recipe

Her parents, her parents, if they don't like Jackie's date at all, make the pineapple upside down cake.

Examples

  • Pineapple mixed with sweet bread makes a nice breadfruit but can sometimes result in an upside-down cake.

    Blog text (7)

  • For her birthday, I decided to make a delicious pineapple upside-down cake with caramelized fruit on top.

  • One of those upside-down cakes from a magazine.

    The Help (2011)

  • Hello, yes, do you still have the pineapple upside-down cake?

    Little Fockers (2010)

  • How about... Pineapple upside-down cake?

    The Visit (2015)

  • We've still got a couple of pieces of the pineapple upside down cake left.

    Blog text (9)

  • Pineapple upside down cake, though, is most wondrous.

    Blog text (9)

  • My favorite was something Mother called Rhubarb Betty, which was sort of an upside-down cake with the rhubarb on the bottom.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • It depends how authentically Hawaiian you want, but my first thought was anything with pineapple: grilled pineapple, pineapple upside-down cake, etc.

    Blog text (29)

  • He brought a classic cherry upside-down cake to the party, which everyone enjoyed.

Synonyms

skillet cake
vsupside-down cake
  • US
6.3

A cake baked in a pan over sweet fruit then flipped so the fruit is on top

is not limited to one type of pan

Surface Forms

upside-down cake singular
upside-down cakes plural

Morphology

upside-down + cake

The meaning (a cake that has been turned over so the fruit becomes the topping) is directly derivable from combining 'upside-down' (inverted) with 'cake' (a baked sweet), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the concept. This adjective+noun compounding is cross-linguistically common (e.g. French 'gâteau renversé', Spanish 'pastel volteado') and follows regular composition, making the expression transparent.

Etymology

Upside-down cake: The dessert upside-down cake comes from the way it is made: fruit is placed in the bottom of the pan and batter goes on top, and after baking you flip the pan so the fruit becomes the top. So the name describes the upside-down way the cake was cooked and explains why the fruit is the 'topping'.