Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes

I've had my eye on this recipe for a week or so, but life is busy right now, with the end of school hoopla. I think teachers are every bit as excited to get rid of our kids as the kids are for summer. The last week of school is filled with kiddie pool parties, Olympic and Field Days, movie afternoons, and parents are trying to cram in those last birthday parties. Plus, i've had three weekends of graduations. I'm excited summer is nearly here. Not that my life will become less crazy, but perhaps less scheduled.


Today i happen to be home with the kids without boys or men of any kind. The kids are happy to run off and play, and i knew the time had come to have my kitchen to myself.


I found the recipe on Epicurean.com.


Fruit topping:


1 can (20 oz.) pineapple chunks (i used pineapple rings)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted


Cake batter:


1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup reserved pineapple juice or milk
1 egg


Preheat the oven to 350°. Generously grease a muffin tin with shortening.


Drain the pineapple, reserving the juice. Lay pineapple on a plate layered with paper towels to drain completely.


In a small bowl mix together the brown sugar and melted butter for the topping. Divide evenly between the cups. Arrange the pineapple on top of the topping decoratively. Set aside.


In a large bowl mix together your dry ingredients. With an electric mixer, beat in the pineapple juice and the butter. Beat for 2 minutes or until batter is smooth. Add egg and beat it in well. Spoon (or use an ice cream scoop) to add the cake batter to the muffin cups. Bake for 30 minutes or til a toothpick comes out clean.


Cool cupcakes for 5 minutes and then place a wire rack over the muffin pan and turn them out onto it. Let cool completely.


Makes 12 cupcakes.

If you choose to use pineapple rings, which i did because i think it's nicer, please note that you will have to cut sections out to make them fit.

The recipe itself did not warn me this was going to be such a hot mess. Be warned. I had to loosen each cupcake from the sides of the tin with a spoon. I did turn out a few onto a wire rack once cool, but i don't recommend it. The pineapple tends to want to slide off. So i used the same spoon to lift each one out and turn it over to the rack after that.

'

They turned out well though, after i figured that last part out!

I don't have any fancy way to get natural light photos, nor do i have fancy plates and all that good stuff yet. Don't they look delicious? They are too. I have already eaten two. These won't last 5 minutes once the boys get home.

Right after i popped these in the oven, i doubled up the recipe and made a 9x13 cake with this recipe. It's taking longer to bake but YUM. I love pineapple upside down cake!

ETA: A photo of my cake!

Low-Fat Oatmeal Banana Bread

I've had some bananas slowly going downhill on my counter for a few days. You know how it is. I figured if i didn't make bread or something, then it would just be another waste.


Instead of going with my stand-by banana bread recipe, i thought i would try something different. Once upon a time i made a kickass pumpkin bread with oatmeal in it and i can't find the recipe anywhere. It's really annoying. No one in my family except me will eat oatmeal AS oatmeal. I'm always trying to find ways of putting it into their food so it's just there, but in a tasty way. I grew up on oatmeal, and i love it, and don't understand any of them at all as they turn their nose up at it.


I found this recipe which was adapted by Joy the Baker from the Weight Watchers recipe.


Lately, i run back and forth from my kitchen to my computer as i read recipes. I'd write them down but that takes longer. I find writing them down doesn't really help me in the long run because i just lose it and have to do it again later if i want to make it again. That's what happened to my oatmeal pumpkin bread recipe. I'm awful about it. I have recipes all over the place.


Well, the down side to this is sometimes i just throw things together and then by the time i read the recipe again,  i think 'Oh, crap... that's not what i did!'


So, i will now hopefully entertain you (or not) with the method to my madness.


The recipe goes like this:


1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour.
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
3 tsp canola or walnut oil
1 large egg, beaten
2 egg whites
3 large ripe bananas
1 cup uncooked old-fashioned oats


Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour loaf pan and set aside. In a large bowl stir together the dry ingredients, including the oats and cinnamon.


At first, this was all i read of the recipe. I was like 'Gotcha!' and ran off to the kitchen.


So i combined my dry ingredients in one bowl (i used allspice since i couldn't find my cinnamon anywhere!), and mashed my bananas in a 2nd bowl, and then i threw my egg, egg whites, and 3 Tbsp (not tsp.) of applesauce instead of oil into one bowl together and kind of beat the hell out of it with a fork.


And then i came back and read more of the recipe, to make sure i wasn't forgetting anything.


In a smaller bowl, mash bananas with a fork. Add oil and whole egg and mix thoroughly.


Add wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Batter will be fairly thick.


In a medium sized bowl, with an electric hand mixer, beat the egg whites until medium stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the batter in three additions.


Pour batter into pan and bake until top of bread is firm to touch, about 40-50 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit 5 minutes in the pan. Then flip out and let cool completely on a wire rack.


Loaf makes about 10 slices, 4 WW points apiece.


Hmm. Well, obviously i didn't follow the recipe. So i got my electric mixer and mixed the egg/applesauce mixture for a couple minutes. No way i was going to get stiff peaks but whatever.


And i didn't fold it into the mixture either. I dumped everything together and mixed it with my mixer for a minute.


I slid my loaf pan into the oven.


I looked around and i thought to myself... I have 2 bananas left. I wonder if it would make a difference to make another loaf with just those two bananas? The first loaf came out and as it cooled i noticed it was a shallow loaf. The photo Joy the Baker has on her page looked the same, but i also wondered if there would be a difference in the loaves if i actually followed the recipe like i was supposed to.


So i made another. Same as before, i used 3 Tbsp applesauce (i thought the original recipe used 3 Tbsp canola oil, but i misread it) and i subbed allspice for the cinnamon. 2 bananas. I also added a couple handfuls of walnuts. My kids hate nuts in their breads and cookies, but i love them, and so does my husband and son.


I did a side by side comparison of the loaves. On the left is the first loaf, and on the right the one i followed by the recipe and added nuts. There's a slight difference in size but it's really negligible.

So my husband and i did a taste test for comparison after dinner.

My husband said it was okay, but drier than my usual breads. Basically, he's asking me not to do this again.

And he's right. They are not as moist as i expect my quick breads to be. But it could be the oatmeal. Old fashioned oats probably suck up some of the moisture that would normally be present in the bread.

Well, i decided that my final decision would be based on the age old question:

How does this go with coffee?

It's better with coffee. Not really the best bread, but it IS low-fat. I mean, i warned you in the title of this blog. I didn't want the fact that it originally came from Weight Watchers to weigh in on my decision, and i think i am being fair to say i didn't. I also did not warn my husband it was low-fat before he took a bite because i didn't want him to be biased.

I would say that if you're looking for something low-fat for either a breakfast bread or a snack, this would be good. Hey, with the oatmeal, it's also heart healthy! And that's always good, right?

After all the cake i have made lately, it's probably good to eat something like this once in a while.

Margarita Cupcakes

Today i am sharing something that was ridiculously easy. Anyone can throw this together and look awesome.

My sister was graduating on Friday and i wanted to do something special but i have to admit, this was one of those weeks. You know, when all your bills get paid so you're broke, you're out of cocoa powder, Mother's Day is in 3 days and your kids are driving you bonkers.

We all have those weeks, don't we? Maybe you don't have kids to drive you crazy. But you have something driving you slowly to the brink. I know you do.

I was poking around the internet looking for a recipe. I knew what i wanted to make. Margarita cupcakes. I may not have cocoa powder, but we generally always have the makings for margaritas.

I found this recipe. She adapted this recipe from RecipeGirl, found here. The picture is what grabbed me. I love beautiful cupcakes. My cupcakes never look like the photos i see, but i like to keep trying.

I scrolled through it, and to my dismay, it calls for a boxed cake mix. For a while, i just sat here, contemplating it. I hadn't used a boxed recipe in a while. I finally decided to give it a go. I felt like i was cheating, but i figured if i drank a margarita while making these cupcakes, the guilt might fade away. And since the recipe actually called for me to drink the leftover margarita, i was all set.

The only thing i changed was using applesauce instead of vegetable/canola oil, and instead of Grand Mariner in the cake, i used Triple Sec.

The buttercream recipe calls for a lot more sugar than i normally use. I thought i'd try it since i wasn't spreading it on a cake. It turned out lovely and creamy. I was surprised. For the lime icing, i used maybe a teaspoon of orange extract in addition to lime juice for a more citrus-y kick. Her recipe calls for Grand Mariner in the frosting, and i didn't have any of that, nor did i want to risk having my icing too soft for piping.

Up next i made some cupcakes for the kids. I made another box mix white cake and topped them with standard frosting which i added a bit of caramel liquid flavoring to. They were really good.

My sister loved the cupcakes and said they devoured them overnight. In the end, i can't be too grumpy at myself for my shortcut since they turned out so well. Sometimes compromise is good, and it's the icing that really set these apart.

Hats Off To My Grads!

It was a very busy weekend around here. Friday we had a wonderfully unique evening ahead of us. I knew for a couple months that one of my best friends was graduating from nursing school (again!), but it wasn't until the beginning of last week we found out my husband would also be walking in the same graduation ceremony! You see, he was getting his degree after 4 years of grueling night classes in Building Trades, but the college had our address wrong and we didn't get any of this information until someone called him up to personally find out if he was coming! Of course we wouldn't miss it for the world!


Both of my beloved graduates deserve a nice cake, don't you think? I thought so!


My friend wanted a chocolate cake. She had pinned an interesting nursing themed cake on Pinterest with a big hint that she would really like one like it several weeks ago. You can click here to take a look at it. 


A lot of people would be like "Aww, hell no, i can't do that!" I'm one of those weirdos who think, "Well... i don't know about that, but let's see what i can come up with." (By the way, to the people who know me, this is not a challenge to find something more difficult for me to do. Haha. Thanks.)


In order to end up with a cake of a decent size, i knew i needed to start out with a large cake. I had to go out and buy a new pan. I chose an 11x15 Wilton's pan that i found at WalMart in the cake decorating aisle. I also picked up some cake boards and a cake box.


Again i used the pound cake recipes on this website, as i did for my last cake. For my friend's cake, i used the double chocolate recipe, and i added chocolate chips this time instead of grated chocolate. Mainly because it was quick and easy and i knew i was going to be trimming this cake down quite a bit from the original size.


I baked my cakes and filled them between with standard vanilla buttercream icing. My buttercream icing is very simple. It doesn't vary much at all from any other recipe out there. I don't use shortening at all. I did once, but it was too greasy for my taste. You can get a nice buttercream by following this short recipe:


2 sticks butter, softened
3 ½ - 4 cups powdered sugar (icing sugar)
1 tsp vanilla


Put your butter in your mixing bowl and beat til smooth. Add sugar a bit at a time. I usually add about 1/3 cup at a time and beat it smooth in between to get a nice consistency. Since i'm spreading this as smoothly as i possibly can (which i am still practicing at), i generally don't add more than 3 ½ cups total of sugar. You can add your vanilla anywhere in the mixing process. I usually add it after about the first full cup of sugar has been mixed in.


I thought about how to get a uniform shape on the cake. I had no template to go by, and one of my biggest worries was getting it all lopsided. I like symmetry. It drives me nuts if things aren't symmetrical when they should be.


I looked around my kitchen and saw these thick wooden skewers that my husband uses for corn on the cob and inspiration struck. I'd use one like a pencil/stylus! So i sketched the edges of my shape with one and when i made a mistake, i could correct it. All my mistakes would be covered in frosting when i was done.

Once i had the entire outline drawn out, i used a piece of aluminum foil i took off the cake and got a straight line for the bottom of the cake. (I waited to draw the right side of the 'shirt' because i was afraid my perception of that line would throw off my bottom line. If that made sense.)

Then, a nice crumb coat.

I asked her what color she liked best. She said she didn't have a favorite, but she'd like something bright. Well, i like purple. I looked online to see how bright the violet gel coloring i had would get, and i thought it would look nice.

I used my Wilton's #47, flat side up, for my sleeve and collar details. I was very pleased with how smooth i got the frosting on the top of the cake. It's my best job yet.

Now, the cake seems about half done, doesn't it? I wish. This was all easy-peasy lemon squeezy, as my daughter would say.

I had done some experimenting with fondant earlier in the week, preparing myself for war. I knew i would never approach the real look of the materials in the example cake from Pinterest. Some of them i am certain are actual products, and not made of fondant or modelling chocolate at all.

I did manage a reasonable cartoon-y facsimile of some of the items. I think i did a pretty good job, considering i haven't worked with fondant much. This was a huge challenge for me.

Voila! Finished!

She loved her cake, and i was pretty pleased with the end result myself!

Now, for my husband. He got his cake a little late, because the nursing cake took up a huge chunk of my time and i was just exhausted over the weekend. We had so much going on. But i finished it on Monday while he was gone to work. Well, i almost got it finished. He came home extra early and i had to make him leave while i finished up the final touches.

When he asked me for a graduation cake, he told me he wanted a big pipe wrench on it. He's a journeyman pipefitter now (since graduation) and they have this HUGE pipe wrench outside their local union hall.

I don't have progression pictures of the cake, because i was totally done trying to document my progress. I just wanted to get it done and made and have time to get laundry done. But it turned out pretty nice. He was very pleased! It was exactly what he wanted!

Vroom Vroom! Racing To The Party!

My nephew's birthday was last week, and my sister had him a little family party over the weekend to celebrate. She asked me (on quite short notice) to bake him a cake. I hit Google for some ideas on how i could pull it off almost immediately. I came up with a vision in my head, and hit the internet for some new cake recipes. My BH&G cook book doesn't have a pound cake recipe, can you imagine? I knew the cake i made would have to be sturdy, and i worried that regular cake wouldn't take the abuse.


I found some promising looking pound cake recipes on this website. When i scrolled down and saw there was a chocolate variation, i was sold! Same recipe, just add chocolate? Score!


One of the best parts of this recipe it it called for two 9" cake cans, and i didn't have to convert a tube or loaf pan recipe into round pans. I'm not lazy or anything, i just didn't have time for all that nonsense.


I made it exactly as stated in the recipe in the original vanilla flavor. It's also important to use the wax paper or parchment paper circles in the bottoms of your cake pans and grease the bottoms and sides well. I use shortening on a paper towel to grease my pans. It's cheaper than using spray and vegetable oil spray leaves a nasty sticky residue on my pans no matter how many times i wash them which really tweaks me off.


I was impressed that these cakes came out so perfectly even that i didn't have to trim the tops or anything. I always have to trim the tops of my regular cakes, plus my oven sort of leans forward a bit. My husband hasn't gotten around to adjusting the legs on it. These cakes didn't even have that forward 'slide' to them which shows my oven does lean a few degrees forward.


I wanted to do another layer, and i had 12" round pans to use. I finally decided to double the cake recipe, and fill the pans evenly, and bake the same amount of time to the 30 minute mark and keep checking every 10 minutes, as in the original recipe.


I REALLY tested the limits of my 5 qt. stand mixer with this one. As i mixed the batter, and the level kept rising, my husband and i were debating on whether or not it was all going to fit in there and mix or not.

In the end, my mixer looked like this:

Then it was time to add the chocolate.

I divided up the batter and slid them into the oven and once again, they came out PERFECT. I am totally in love with this recipe now. Check it out.

Once all 4 cakes were cooled, it was time to wrap them and put them in the fridge. The recipe says cling wrap, but i didn't have cling wrap. I have aluminum foil.

See how studded the chocolate cakes are with bits of dark chocolate? Yum!

I use family birthday cakes as a way of having an excuse to do new things. Previously i had only made fondant to use for cutting out small decorative pieces on cupcakes, and once i did 24 cupcakes with 100% fondant tops. But that was easy peasy compared to what i was about to attempt. My goal was to cover the bottom 12" layer cake with fondant.

First i had to do a crumb coat or 'dirty ice' it as Buddy Valastro calls it. I slide pieces of wax paper under all my cake edges so i don't get icing all over my cake plate.

Then i added a nice thick layer of frosting that will go between the layers and finish off the top layer with a crumb coat.

I made a batch of fondant and added color and rolled it out large enough to cover the whole bottom of the cake. 

And then i realized i had a problem. My rolling pin is only a regular sized rolling pin and i do not have a large fondant roller. On my favorite cake show, Cake Boss, they roll their fondant around a large pin and then unroll it over the cake.

So now what was i going to do? I had over 20 inches round(ish) of fondant.

It was my son who came up with a solution. We laid sections of waxed paper over the top of the fondant and rolled the wax paper and fondant together around my rolling pin. And then we unrolled it over the cake.... backwards. That's right. Wax paper side down.

This is where i wanted to bang my head against the wall.

So we lifted it all back up off the cake and i smoothed out the frosting, and i took the fondant off the paper and rolled it out again. New wax paper over the fondant. Roll it back up.

We managed to get the fondant onto the cake this time, properly, but not without some tearing. I had to patch it all up and smooth it out the best i could. I was dismayed. And a little peeved. And i might have wanted to cry a little bit.

Hey, i never said i was perfect. But i took a deep breath and i thought... i will cover all that crap up with icing.

I also decided that the top layer would NOT be covered in fondant. It might look a little strange, half in fondant and half in frosting, but my sanity would remain intact, and that's really what's important.

My next challenge was trying to figure out how to frost the top layers and then transfer them to the top of the first cake.

My son is the one who came up with a solution once again! What would i do without him?

We decided to use an 8" cake pan as our icing base. Putting the 9" cake on top of it, i had just enough overhang that i would be able to lift it off of the pan and onto the cake when i was finished.

In the cake recipe, it says to take the thicker cake (we poured 1/3 of the batter into one pan and 2/3 batter into the second pan) and cut it in half with dental floss. Yea, i tried doing it with dental floss, but that was going to take a coon's age. My husband took a bread knife and sawed it in half for me while i was doing some frosting.

Pretty.

One layer of white frosting, and a second layer of frosting in blue, and we're ready to assemble a cake!

I had to get serious from here on out. I bought some Disney's Cars toys to put on this cake, so instead of putting the top cake in the very center of the bottom cakes, i slid the top cake back to the edge of the top of the bottom cake, so it kind of made a "mountain".

I wanted the cars to be racing up to the top of my mountain. So i had to devise a road or highway.

I used a Wilton's #47 tip, flat side up, to make the asphalt. I was stressing over the road coloring because it came out kind of uneven. That's when i realized i'd been using milk in my buttercream, which i never used to do. I omitted milk from the rest of my frosting, and i made a LOT of frosting with this cake. To make the yellow lines, i simply put some yellow icing in a Ziploc type bag and nipped the tip off with scissors.

In my previous blog for the Easter Basket cookies, i mentioned how much of a pain the grass tip was. Well, i bought a new one. The first one was crappily stamped, and some of the holes have bits of metal partially covering them. I used my new grass tip and some green icing and put shrubby grass around the highway on both side, and around the seam of the two cakes. It was a LOT easier this time.

I used a brown icing in a sort of desert-y color that fairly matched the color on the Cars toy boxes and i piped rock formations and hills and buttes all around the bottom layer of the cake.

Then i took a nice white buttercream and piped a bunch of clouds all around the cake. Some of them were in formations. I thought it was a nice touch. I also took the same icing i made the yellow dotted line on the road with and i piped in a couple road signs. I just took a bit of frosting and colored it black and piped the sign decorations on. I also put a finish line on top of the cake.

Then i added some rocks and grass to the top of the cake. And a cool Cars logo with his name on it. My writing could still use some work.

All that was left was to put the Cars on.

And it was DELICIOUS!!!

I was very happy with this cake, and everyone loved it! I have like 7 more requests for cake soon. I'm going to be getting a LOT of practice! =)

As a sidenote, you can of course substitute milk chocolate or chocolate chips in this recipe for the chocolate bits in the chocolate cake. Don't be afraid to try something slightly different if dark chocolate isn't to your taste!

Bake Sale Magic

For years now, i have struggled with making the "perfect" chocolate chip cookie. Once in a great while, they'd come out just right.


"Just right" to me means a lot of things combined. I don't want cookies that are too dark. My old oven was notorious for uneven baking. Maybe because it was a piece of crap. I want my cookies to have just the right shape across the top. I don't want everything except the chips or nuts to be flat because they spread too much. I would even refrigerate my dough and still get them. I also don't want my cookies to be too cakey. I want just the right amount of chew, substance, and moistness. This is a very difficult combination for me to get.


You know how Soft Batch™ cookies look so perfect? Well, i wanted to get something close to that, visually, but without all the corn syrup and preservatives.


In fact, baking chocolate chip cookies has become such a frustrating endeavor for me, that i had almost given up.


My son came home earlier in the week and said his Art Club was having a bake sale this weekend, and he'd like to contribute. He asked if he could borrow my baking stuff. I asked him if he even thought he could bake. He said "Well, i thought i'd borrow you, too. You're part of the baking supplies! I can't do this on my own!"


Isn't he cute how he "asks" me for things? Teenagers are so much fun.


I thought all week about what i could bake. I thought about shortbread, but when i think bake sale, i always think about things with chocolate. I just so happened to have several bags of chocolate chip varieties in my freezer. I didn't quite bake as much through the holidays as i expected. He had already asked about Heath bar cookies. So i thought i would give chocolate chip cookies a whirl again and if i had to be up all night with a backup plan, so be it.


Wouldn't you know it... my cookies came out PERFECT. Of course, since i don't get to eat them, they would be. That's how the universe works.


I made Heath Bar Chocolate Chip Cookies for my first batch, and the second bath were what i will just call Chocolate Chip Combo Cookies. I added both white and semi-sweet chips into them.


Now for pictures. So you can drool.

Heath Bar Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Chocolate Chip Combo Cookies!

All packaged and ready for the bake sale!

Now, for the recipe.

I did adapt the recipe for chocolate chip cookies from my Better Homes & Gardens cook book.

This is not my base recipe. I didn't invent it. I just tweaked it. I'll write the recipe out as written in the book, but add my 2 cents in parenthesis.

1/2 butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening or veg. oil (i adapted this to use 1/2 cup applesauce instead)

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

The recipe calls for 1 12-ounce package of chocolate chips and 1 1/2 cups chopped and toasted (optional) nuts. But i think that's a lot. And i didn't want nuts. So i added approximately:


For the Heath cookies i added:
1/2 bag (or about 3/4 cup) of Heath Bits
1/2 - 3/4 bag of chocolate chips (i had a partial bag and i just dumped it all in)


For the Chocolate Chip Combos i added:
1/2 - 3/4 bag of chocolate chips
Approximately 1/2 bag of white baking chips


Preheat oven to 375°F. In a large mixing bowl beat the butter and shortening (applesauce for me) with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add the brown sugar, granulated sugar, baking soda and salt. Beat until mixture is combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in remaining flour. Stir in chocolate chips and, if desired nuts. (I beat in everything with my stand mixer. Best small kitchen appliance ever.)


Drop dough by rounded teaspoons (i used a small sized ice cream scoop which i read estimates about 2 Tablespoons but i didn't fill it all the way) 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. (I advise against using ungreased cookie sheets. I prefer to line all my cookie pans with parchment paper. It will save you mega amounts of frustration. Seriously.) Bake for 8 or 9 minutes or until the edges are light brown (i took mine promptly out at 8 minutes but ovens vary). Cool on cookie sheets for 2 minutes then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.


We taste tested them (of course) and my husband was over the moon, my daughters were begging for another, and my son will probably buy some of our own cookies at the bake sale. I have to admit, i was rather impressed with them myself.


I think i will make a whole new batch of the Heath cookies today. Not that i need them. But i want them.