Pineapple upside down cake

All these years of blogging, all these cakes I've made... and I've never posted a pineapple upside down cake recipe! It's kinda retro and old fashioned, apparently, but I've never understood how anything can be "in fashion" or "outdated" when it comes to food - especially if it's a tasty, delicious recipe. Who cares if it's from the '70s or the '50s or the '80s? For heaven's sake, it's FOOD, not fashion. It annoys me tremendously when some idiot foodista or television chef somewhere labels a particular greens or grain or fruit as "fashionable" or "healthy" or "THE must-have item", and the entire bleddy food blog world immediately features it, so that there is a landslide of samey same posts. I dislike food fads with a passion! Okay, my soapbox rant is over for today. 

So, pineapple cake. I only made it because Pete bought a bag of fresh pineapple "fingers" that was so acidic and sharp, it could have stripped the enamel from your teeth no problem. He then had the brainwave of making pineapple upside down cake. Or rather, getting me to make it. Since I had a simple, one-bowl sort of recipe (based on a BBC Good Food recipe) for this cake, I acceded to his request. 

While the recipe called for pineapple syrup and vanilla extract to flavour the cake, I didn't have either ingredient, my pineapple being fresh rather than canned. But there was enough pineapple juice at the bottom of the bag, which I substituted for the syrup. And then simply ignored the fact that there was no vanilla extract in my store cupboard. It didn't matter, anyway. The cake smelt amazing as it baked, so fragrant and pineappley, and it tasted as beautiful as it smelt. I love this cake - I just can't understand why it took me so long to post the recipe!

Recipe for: Pineapple upside down cake

Ingredients: 

For the topping

50 gm softened butter

50 gm soft light brown sugar

Fresh pineapple fingers or tinned pineapple slices

For the cake

100 gm softened butter

100 gm soft light brown sugar

125 gm plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 large eggs
2 tbsp pineapple juice

1 tsp vanilla extract (if you have it)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. 

2. Beat the butter and sugar for the topping until soft and creamy. Spread this as best as possible around the bottom and halfway up the sides of a 7" round cake pan. 

3. Arrange the pineapple slices and cherries (if using) over this such that the entire bottom of the tin is covered with as few spaces as possible. 

4. In a big bowl, add all the cake ingredients and beat until the batter is soft and smooth, and the ingredients well mixed. 

5. Drop the batter by spoonfuls over the pineapple rings and spread evenly to cover.

6. Bake for 30-45 minutes until a tester inserted in the cake comes out clean. The cake could take longer than 45 minutes, or be done in less. Test at 35 minutes, then every 5-7 minutes until it is cooked. 

7. Let it sit in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a serving plate. Eat warm, with or without vanilla ice cream.

Pineapple rava (semolina) kesari

The most common South Indian item made with rava or semolina is upma. Upma is not my first choice of breakfast or tiffin items, as I might have mentioned before. I don’t hate it, it’s just not my first choice. If I do have it at home, I like it plain, without anything added to jazz it up - like onions or tomatoes or ginger or any other vegetables – but with sugar sprinkled on top, or on the side – I’m not fussy (oh, the irony).

But when it comes to rava kesari, I have no objections at all. A friend who knows of my tepid feelings towards upma once commented that rava kesari is just sweet upma. I’m not certain now, but I think she might have been trying to put me off my serving of kesari – too bad for her it didn’t work. There was no sharing involved from my side, I can tell you.

When I first read about pineapple kesari, a great big light bulb seemed to go off in my head, illuminating every last cobweb in there – now WHY hadn’t the idea of pineapple kesari occurred to me? Adding one of my favourite fruits to a sweet that I liked even “plain” – how perfectly delicious!

And so it was – perfectly delicious.

Note: I have to add that my kesari was a bit on the dry side (ok by me) because I skimped on the ghee – well, slightly skimped. If you, on the other hand, weigh in on the skimpy side of the scales, by all means add another generous tablespoon of the good stuff. Your pineapple kesari will not suffer for it, I assure you.

Recipe for: Pineapple rava  (cream of wheat) kesari

Ingredients:


1/2 cup rava (semolina)

1/4 tsp saffron strands
4 tbsp warm milk
1/2 cup hot milk
1/4 cup crushed/chopped pineapple (fresh or canned)

1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar (or to taste)
1/8 tsp cardamom powder
4-5 cashews, broken in pieces
1 tbsp ghee
2 tbsp raisins or mixed dried berries



Method:


1. Add saffron to 4 tbsp warm milk and set aside to soak.

2. Mix the sugar, pineapple and water together and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and leave it for 3-4 minutes while you get the rava ready.

3. Melt the ghee in a small pan and add the cashews and raisins/berries.

Fry on medium heat till the cashews turn golden brown and the raisins/berries puff up. Remove from pan and reserve.

4. Toast the rava (semolina) on low heat in the same pan till it turns a darker shade and becomes aromatic.

5. Now carefully pour the boiling pineapple mixture over the toasted rava, stirring briskly to avoid lumps forming.

6. Stir in the hot milk as well. Cook the rava for 2-3 minutes longer, then add the ghee-fried cashews and raisins/berries. Serve hot.



RECIPE: PINEAPPLE RAVA (SEMOLINA) KESARI

Ingredients:
1/2 cup rava (semolina)
1/4 tsp saffron strands
4 tbsp warm milk
1/2 cup hot milk
1/4 cup crushed/chopped pineapple (fresh or canned)
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar (or to taste)
1/8 tsp cardamom powder
4-5 cashews, broken in pieces
1 tbsp ghee
2 tbsp raisins or mixed dried berries


Method:
1. Add saffron to 4 tbsp warm milk and set aside to soak.
2. Mix the sugar, pineapple and water together and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and leave it for 3-4 minutes while you get the rava ready.
3. Melt the ghee in a small pan and add the cashews and raisins/berries. Fry on medium heat till the cashews turn golden brown and the raisins/berries puff up. Remove from pan and reserve.
4. Toast the rava (semolina) on low heat in the same pan till it turns a darker shade and becomes aromatic.
5. Now carefully pour the boiling pineapple mixture over the toasted rava, stirring briskly to avoid lumps forming.
6. Stir in the hot milk as well. Cook the rava for 2-3 minutes longer, then add the ghee-fried cashews and raisins/berries. Serve hot.

Surprise powerhouse muffins

Powerhouse muffins - what else could you possibly call muffins that have, as part of the ingredients, peanut butter, mashed banana, fresh pineapple, flaxseed powder, toasted skin-on almonds, raw cauliflower...

Wait, what? Cauliflower? That smelly vegetable? In a sweet muffin? Oh yes, you read that right, people. This muffin recipe actually does have raw cauliflower as an ingredient. If you're like me, you'd be wondering why anybody would want to add cauliflower to a muffin. (If you're not like me and you routinely add inappropriate ingredients to your recipes and make a success of them, what are you doing reading this blog in the first place??? My conservative - in terms of mixing and matching food ingredients - blog will hold no surprises for you!)

But while I might not come up with weird and wonderful food ideas all on my own, I'm still capable of recognising weird and wonderful food ideas when I come across them on other blogs. And, assuming the weirdness and wonderfulness does not seem completely insane to me, I can be intrigued into trying out the weird and the wonderful for myself, just to see if the weird and the wonderful can actually come together and make something edible and tasty.

I really, really didn't think the muffins would turn out well - in the sense that they would appeal to my tastebuds, especially with me knowing about the cauliflower. (I would have preferred to make them without me knowing, to be honest, but I just couldn't bend reality enough. Should have tried harder, maybe...) I was doubtful about the muffins' edibility mainly because I'm not one of those people who eat dreadful-tasting things merely on the dubious grounds that they're "healthy". My healthy has to come strongly disguised as tasty, let me tell you.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was sufficiently taken up with the thought of trying out the muffins on Pete (what, did you think I'D actually eat one first???), so I went ahead and made them, with a couple of minor changes in ingredients and quantities. (The original recipe can be found here.) As it turned out, even if I'd wanted to be the guinea pig, Pete didn't give me the chance. He sneaked one while it was quite hot and still cooling on the countertop, and pronounced them "lovely". To be fair, they smelt really rather nice.

I let him eat the muffin fully and start on another before I said: "The muffins are nice, are they?"

"Oh yeah, really soft and fruity."

"Oh good," I said, happily. "So do you want to know what's in them?"

He regarded me suspiciously, mid-bite. "What? I suppose you're going to say it's something dreadful?"

"Depends on what you'd consider dreadful." I grinned at him. "It's got pureed cauliflower in it!"

He looked at the half-eaten muffin in his hand like it was an apple in which he'd found half a worm.

"Cauliflower?" he repeated in pained disbelief. "What in god's name made you think of making muffins with cauliflower?"

"It was a recipe I saw on a blog," I said. "Obviously it works, because you couldn't taste or smell the cauliflower. Glad you tasted it first, though."

He made a few noises like he was going to be sick, while swallowing the rest of the muffin. "For god's sake, don't sppring this sort of thing on me!" he grumbled.

And then he went back to the kitchen to get himself another muffin.

Recipe for: Powerhouse muffins



Ingredients:

1/2 (heaped) cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter (I used chunky, and I'm glad I didnt use 1/2 cup as I found the peanut butter taste far too strong - and sort of overbaked, too, when I tasted a muffin)
1 large banana, mashed with a fork
1/2 cup raw cauliflower puree (leave out the stem, use just the "flowers" in the puree)



1/4 cup fresh pineapple puree
1 large egg
1 cup whole-wheat self-raising flour
1/4 cup powdered flaxseeds
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
15-20 skin-on almonds (toasted and chopped)

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180C/350F. Spray 12-cup muffin tray with non-stick spray or use silicone liners (which I sprayed anyway).

2. Mix brown sugar, flaxseed powder,



mashed banana, pineapple



and cauliflower purees,



egg,



peanut butter,



and vanilla extract. Mix well.

3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking power and baking soda.



Pour into puree mixture, stirring just until mixed. The batter will be lumpy.



Lightly stir in the chopped toasted almonds.



4. Divide batter into muffin cups and bake till the muffins are done (20 minutes or more, depending on your oven).



Test with a toothpick to check. Best served warm and fresh, but can be reheated to good effect in a microwave oven.

Pineapple-beet-carrot cake

I got the basic recipe for this cake from Joy of Baking, one of my favourite blogs for cake porn. I’ve made carrot cake a few times before, but I like trying out new variations when I come across them, and the tip of adding crushed pineapple was tempting. Then, because there was a small beetroot in the fridge, I reduced the amount of carrot required and made up the deficit with the beet, grated. Well, why not? I just wanted to see if the beetroot would make its presence felt and if anybody would object to it in a cake.

As it turned out, nobody could tell there was beetroot in it. The batter turned pink thanks to the addition of the beetroot but the end result didn’t have the red colour that I imagined would show up. I could taste the beetroot, but perhaps it’s because I knew it was there.

I do like to sneakily make people eat things they profess not to like, wait for them to say “mmmm… that’s nice” and then hit them with the reality. (It gives me a certain satisfaction which probably has its roots in sheer meanness!) This formula worked perfectly with Pete and his daughter (yet again, haha).

Unfortunately for Pete, he cant play that trick on me… that sort of thing doesn’t work because my palate is very discerning and can pretty much always tell if there’s something I don’t like in my food. Nobody but NOBODY can sneak aubergine/brinjal/eggplant into anything I eat - and folks, this aint a challenge, so don’t force me to throw up a rainbow-coloured yawn. (I came across that phrase recently in a novel set in Australia – isnt that just the prettiest euphemism for a very unpretty physical reaction? I just HAD to use it myself!)

As far as beetroot in cake is concerned, I would say that a judicious use would be the best way. I don’t think I would care for a cake made entirely with beet – that would most likely be a bit too strong a flavour to mask with anything else.

Recipe for: Pineapple-beet-carrot cake



1/2 cup brazil nuts and walnuts, coarsely chopped
1 cup carrots, grated
1/2 cup beetroot, grated
1-1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp allspice + 1/2 tsp cardamom powder
2 large eggs
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
6 tbsp oil vegetable of sunflower oil
1 heaping tbsp ghee
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup crushed pineapple, well drained

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Spray 8” round pan with non-stick spray and line the bottom with silicone paper.

2. Toast the chopped nuts on a skillet, stirring constantly, till the nuts are lightly browned and fragrant.



Let cool.

3. Peel and finely grate the carrots and beetroot. Set aside.



4. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and allspice & cardamom. Set aside.



5. Beat the eggs until frothy.



6. Gradually add the sugar and keep beating until the batter is thick and light colored.



7. Add the oil in a steady stream and then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat just until incorporated.



Add the ghee and mix in.



8. With a large rubber spatula fold in the grated carrots and beet and chopped nuts.



9. Stir in the crushed pineapple.



Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan.



Bake 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.



10. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. After about 5-10 minutes invert the cake onto the wire rack, remove the pan and silicone paper, and then cool completely before cutting.

Ooey gooey pineapple pudding cake

Another of those long goods-train-like, really catchy names that I'm so good at manufacturing. But this time, consider ooey-gooey to be the adjective that qualifies the noun (hey, I did English Literature in college, can you tell?). The noun here being the actual title for this post (and the cake) - which is, of course, pineapple pudding cake. Not too bad, that. Straightforward and factual. With a bit of English grammar thrown in gratis.

Considering that I hadn't really had much faith in the outcome of the recipe (I'm a major Doubting Thomas, me!), I was rather pleased with the result. I got the recipe off a lycos food group that I subscribe to - that is to say, I subscribed looooong back and didnt get around to unsubscribing. Partly because I couldnt be bothered, and partly because once in a while, I manage to salvage a little drop from the massive waves of recipes that crash into my inbox every day.

Are you wondering if this pineapple pudding cake is one of those salvaged drops? Yes, sort of. Sometimes those drops of water turn out to be little sparkly gems, and sometimes they're just - well, a recipe that manages to work. This is one of the latter kind... not quite a gem, but not dross either. That's my opinion. My mother and Pete - especially Pete - thought it was incredibly good.

I had serious doubts about the glaze (for want of a better name) for the cake. The cake itself wasnt bad, for an eggless one, using the one-bowl method. But the recipe said the glaze had to be poured boiling hot over the hot cake. I had mental visions of the cake promptly disintegrating into a soggy mess, so I hesitated an awful lot before going ahead. My mother didnt help by peering at the contents of the saucepan - which was bubbling merrily, a mixture of evaporated milk, a bit of condensed milk, margarine, sugar and chopped nuts - and saying in an extremely doubtful tone: "Are you going to pour THAT over the cake?"

I suppose that did it. I consider myself at perfect liberty to second-guess instructions in other people's recipes and query methods given in cookery books - but to be second-guessed about something I'm making (even if from some unknown recipe) is not on.

So before anyone else could convey their doubtful disbelief, I promptly poured the hot glaze over the hot cake - but then I was too chicken to follow through on the consequences. Basically, after pouring the glaze, I turned my back on the cake, switched off the kitchen light and went off to watch a movie.

Did I think about the cake? Nope. Not at all.

A few hours later, I went to check on the cake somewhat fearfully, expecting to see a disintegrated mess on the plate - but to my surprise, the cake was still standing. All the excess glaze that had overflowed on the plate had been soaked up by the cake itself.

Thrilled to see the whole thing still in one piece, I let Pete cut himself a slice. It was ooey and gooey and more pudding than cake - he had it with honey vanilla icecream and pronounced the combination delectable. When I tried it, I found it rather too sweet for my liking - but my sweet tooth is very quickly satisfied, so I'm not the best judge.



The final verdict is: If you like gooey moist sweet cakes, this is the one for you. The glaze sort of caramelized (if that's the right term) to a darkly sweet texture - you could certainly say that the sum of the parts added to more than the whole! Or something like that, anyway.

Recipe for: Pineapple pudding cake



Ingredients:

For the cake:



1 cup crushed pineapple with juice (NOT syrup)
1/2 cup white sugar
1-1/2 cups plain flour
3 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 tbsp demerara sugar (or use brown sugar)

For glaze or topping:

1/2 cup evaporated milk
3 tbsp condensed milk
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Method:

1. In a large bowl, mix all the cake ingredients together (except the demerara/brown sugar) until the flour is incorporated. The batter will be quite thick.

2. Scrape batter into a greased 6" round cake pan. Even it out with the back of a wetted spoon.



3. Then sprinkle the demerara or brown sugar over the top.



4. Bake at 180C (350F) for about 45 mnutes or till the cake tests done and has pulled away slightly from the sides.

5. When the cake has been in the oven for about 35 minutes, make the glaze/topping. Put all the topping/glaze ingredients in a small pan.



6. Bring to a boil on medium heat, stirring till the butter/margarine has melted completely, and let it bubble gently for a couple of minutes.



7. When the cake is done, turn it out onto a serving plate.



8. While it is still hot, pour the hot topping on the cake.



9. Let it cool completely (preferably leave it overnight) before cutting. Serve with vanilla icecream.