Grandma Sophie's Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Grandma Sophie was from Missouri but was of French Canadian extraction. This cake is easy and very, very good -- and nothing at all like a cake-mix pineapple upside-down cake.

3 eggs, separated
1 C. white sugar
1 C. flour
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
3 tbs. pineapple juice

1/2 C. butter ( 1 cube)
Pineapple slices from a medium can (or fresh)
1 C. brown sugar
1/4 C. pineapple juice

Optional:
Pecan halves
Maraschino cherries
Dried apricot halves
Or what-have-you (prunes? figs? who knows?)

Beat egg whites until stiff. Add yolks and mix gently until well mixed. Add white sugar gradually, beating until thick and lemon colored. Sift remaining dry ingredients together and fold into egg mixture. Add 3 tbs. pineapple juice and blend. (Sometimes I add a teaspoon or two of dark rum to the batter at this point, but that probably wouldn't have been Grandma Sophie's style. Maybe bourbon...)

In a 9" cast-iron or other heavy, ovenproof skillet melt butter, brown sugar, and 1/4 C. pineapple juice together and simmer until syrupy. Lay pineapple slices in a nice pattern in the skillet (I like to cut some of them in half and put them on the sides, too). Decorate in and around the pineapple rings, if desired, with pecans and fruits.

Pour in the batter while sauce is bubbling hot. Pop into a 325 degree oven and cook 40 minutes near the top or until it tests done. (It will still be moist.) Remove from the oven and let it rest a couple of minutes to compose itself, but then be sure and flip pan onto a big platter while it's still hot, or it may be hard to remove from the pan. (If some fruit sticks to the pan, it's easy to rearrange on the cake at this point. Later, not so much.)

Delicieux!