Pineapple Upside Down Cake

When I was a kid I was given my choice of cake my mom would make for my birthday. I’m not sure why but I always asked for pineapple upside down cake. It may be that I just liked the taste of pineapple with a classic yellow cake mix or it was the only cake my mom knew how to make. I’m not sure.

Yesterday was my birthday, and my 11 year old daughter asked me what kind of cake I would like.  I flashed back to when I was her age and requested pineapple upside down cake and sure enough she made it for me with very little help on my part. All I did was facilitate her getting the cast iron skillet into the oven, removing it and flipping it onto a plate. The rest she did herself with some additional help from her friend Duncan as in Duncan Hines Moist Classic Yellow Cake. I was impressed.

Now you can make your own cake batter from scratch, and I will post a recipe for that too but when in a hurry or are just a kid doing it for the first time, there is nothing wrong with a little commercial cake mix. It just cuts out a few steps and speeds up the process.

When my mom made her pineapple upside down cake, she used a rectangular bake pan and crushed pineapple but for this recipe, we used a large cast iron skillet and pineapple slices. My mom always served her pineapple upside down cake with real whip cream so I taught my daughter how to make it herself.

We prepared a great dinner of grilled steaks with a port wine demi glace sauce, steamed yellow squash and rice pilaf, but the highlight of the meal and the one that took me back to my childhood was the cake. It was a great night.

Important: Although my daughter prepared most of this cake by herself, I was still there watching what she was doing especially since she was working with the stove top and oven.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Ingredients:
2/3 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 can of pineapple slices
some maraschino cherries
1 box of your favorite yellow cake mix

How to Prepare

I used a large cast iron pan because it is heavy and I can stick it into the oven without having to worry about it burning the bottom of the cake. You can prepare the topping in a sauce pan and transfer it to a cake pan with 2 inch high sides but then you have two pans to clean up.

Preheat your oven to 350°F degrees.

Heat your pan over medium heat, add the butter and brown sugar to it and let the brown sugar melt and the mixture start to boil. My daughter asked me how to measure out 2/3 cup of butter and I told her she can let it come to room temperature and use a measuring cup or look at the butter wrapper for the conveniently marked measurements. She opted for the second idea.

When the butter and brown sugar start boiling, remove from heat and start adding whole pineapple slices to the bottom of the pan. Cut some remaining slices in half and line the edge of the cast iron pan with the half pieces. Add some cherries to the holes in the whole pineapple slices and you are ready for the yellow cake batter.

Prepare the box of yellow cake mix following the directions on the box.  The recipe my daughter followed called for three eggs and for some reason she only added two but the end result was fine. I’m not sure how the third egg would have changed the taste, but her version was delicious.

When the cake batter is ready, pour the cake mix into the cast iron pan and bake for  the amount of time suggested on the cake box. You know it’s done when you can stick a toothpick into the cake and it comes out clean. My daughter’s cake took a little longer than the recipe said it would which is why the toothpick test is a better indicator.

When the cake is done, remove it from the oven and immediately loosen the side of the cake from the pan with a dinner knife and let it cool for a few minutes. Once cooled down some, place a plate on top of the pan and flip it over. It should come out easily looking delicious and ready to eat.

Whip up some homemade whip cream, add some birthday candles and you are ready to blow.

Yellow Cake From Scratch

For those of you who would like to make your moist yellow cake from scratch, here is a simple recipe for you:

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All About Chocolate - Part 2

Yesterday I wrote all about where chocolate comes from, how it is made and the differences between bittersweet chocolate and semi sweet chocolate. I also look at dark chocolate, white chocolate and ask, "Does chocolate really taste sweet?" - See All About Chocolate - Part 1

Chocolaty Examples

Here are two brownie recipes. The first uses 8 oz. of unsweetened chocolate. Look at all of the sugar that is used to balance that! The second calls for semisweet chocolate. The difference between the two recipes is pretty clear.

Brownies made with unsweetened chocolate (100% chocolate)

8- 1 ounce squares of unsweetened chocolate
1 cup butter
5 eggs
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

Brownies made with semisweet chocolate

8 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour

Note that, even though both recipes call for 8 ounces of chocolate, there is a full 2 1/4 cup reduction in sugar in the recipe that calls for semisweet chocolate! The semisweet recipe also halves the butter and reduces the number of eggs. This is most likely because there is more cocoa butter in the unsweetened chocolate than there is in the semi-sweet chocolate.

Since the semisweet chocolate also contains less chocolate (maybe as much as 65% less, depending on the semisweet chocolate used), not as many eggs are needed to balance out the drying effect of the cocoa solids contained in the chocolate.

How To Make These Brownies

To make either version of the brownies, melt together the chocolate and butter. Stir until smooth and then cool. Whisk in the sugar by hand, followed by the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla and then the flour. You can add toasted nuts as well, if you’d like. Pour into a greased and lined pan (8” x 8” for thicker brownies and 9”x 13” for thinner brownies) and bake at 325F until done.

To Temper or Not to Temper

There is no need to temper chocolate that is going to be used in a recipe. Melting it is sufficient. The goal of tempering is to get the cocoa butter to crystallize in its most stable form, and, since it melts at body temperature anyway, tempering would be a waste of time in a batter that will go in the oven at temperatures well in excess of 98F!

The time to temper is when you want the chocolate to stand on its own—either as a coating for truffles or molded candies or for decoration. Tempering is not difficult, but it can be a little fussy. There are many excellent resources on the web that can walk you through the process.

If you want to make candy but do not want to go through the trouble of tempering the chocolate, you can use chocolate coatings. These can be found in craft stores or grocery stores. In my opinion, these products do not taste very good, partly because of the substitution of other fats for cocoa butter.

You can make your own, good tasting coating chocolate using this simple formula: chocolate and a neutral oil together in a 10 to 1 ratio. So, for ten ounces of chocolate, you’ll need 1 ounce of vegetable oil. For 5 ounces, you’ll need ½ ounce (1 tablespoon). The addition of the vegetable fat will allow the chocolate to firm up and maintain a sheen without needing to be tempered.

How To Make One Sweet Cherry Cobbler

As many of you know, I recently started building Squidoo lenses. Squidoo is a website where anyone can go and build a page, called a lens, about anything that interests them. Squidoo is easy to use, and I have had a lot of fun with my Romantic Valentine’s Day Dinner, Best of the Wurst, Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Coq au Vin lenses. I plan on building more lenses in the future because, as anyone who uses Squidoo can tell you, it can be more than a little addictive!

One of the best aspects of Squidoo is the community of people who use it. I have met many wonderful, helpful and supportive people on Squidoo. One of my favorite new Squidoo friends is Chef Achim Thiemermann, or “Chef Keem.”

Chef Keem has been a lensmaster for a little over a year and already has published over 100 lenses! Apart from that, he also sells amazing candies and has a line of flavored agave nectar that he sells on ebay and in Whole Foods in TX, CO, OK and LA. As if all that weren’t enough, he is also the Executive Chef for the Driftwood Lodge in SE Alaska. The man is a dynamo!

I have been fortunate enough to try some of Chef Keem’s products. His Espresso Sea Salt Caramel Truffles are a wonderful treat, but I think the Agasweet, his flavored agave nectar, is so tasty and so versatile that I was inspired to create a recipe with it. This is based on his wife’s recipe for peach cobbler, and I have modified it to work with cherries. So, this one is for my new friend, Squidoo Lensmaster Chef Keem.

Squidoo Cherry Cobbler

For the fruit
About 4 cups of Bing cherries, pitted
1 tablespoon flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
¼ cup Agasweet Almond
¼ cup Agasweet Vanilla
¼ teaspoon mace or nutmeg

Toss cherries with flour. Combine cherries and the rest of the ingredients in a sauce pan. Heat until it just comes to a boil. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Melt ½ stick of butter, and pour into a 9X13” baking pan. Preheat oven to 325°F.

For the batter
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon mace or nutmeg
1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup Agasweet Almond
1/3 cup Agasweet Vanilla
2 oz. butter, melted and cooled
2 oz. vegetable oil

For the optional streusel

Mix together until crumbly:
4 oz. butter
2.5 oz. sugar
2 oz. brown sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
6 oz. all purpose flour
2 oz. toasted and ground almonds

Whisk dry ingredients together very well. Whisk wet ingredients together. Whisk the wet into the dry until you have a relatively smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth it out. Evenly pour the fruit mixture on top of the batter, juice and all.

Sprinkle on the optional streusel. Use as much or as little as you’d like. Any leftover streusel mix can be frozen for another time.

Bake in the center of the pre-heated oven until the filling is bubbling and the batter is deep golden brown and set.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

And that is it—my tribute to Chef Keem. I do hope you will try his flavored Agasweet. You can use them to sweeten tea or coffee, but they are also wonderful when used in savory cooking. When you order, Chef Keem will even send you a list of ideas of how to use this great, healthy ingredient.