* Episode Three: Pineapple U-D Cake

Today, on COOKING with anna: Pineapple Upside-Down Cake! It's called that because it's UPSIDE-DOWN!! WHOA!


Again, finding a kitchen is the first step.




Preheat your oven to 350F.



Today, we're listening to the Barenaked Ladies on this wee stereo. Pineapple Upside-Down Cake is fairly light-hearted and fun-loving, as is BNL.



Here are the ingredients you'll need. Not all of all of that, of course. Here's a list. And ingredients list, if you will:



-- 1/2 cup butter/margarine, melted

-- 2/3 cups brown sugar

-- 2-ish cups pineapple (I used one can crushed and one can chunked)

-- 1 1/2 cups flour

-- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

-- 1/2 tsp salt

-- 1/2 tsp cinnamon

-- 1/2 cup butter/margarine, softened

-- 2/3 cup white sugar

-- 2 eggs

-- 1 tsp vanilla extract

-- 3/4 cup milk



Butter a pan. Is this pan starting to look familiar?



Stir the brown sugar into the melted butter. Mmmmmm. . . butter-y sugar.



Pour the butter-y sugar into the buttered pan. Lots of butter. Obviously, this is a low-fat recipe.



Drain the pineapple. DRAIN IT VERY WELL! After draining most of the juice, I dumped the pineapple onto several layers of paper towel and then squeezed out the rest. If you like, you can save the juice and drink it or mix it in with your orange juice during breakfast, but I do not like, so I didn't.

Put the pineapple in the pan with the butter-y sugar. Press it down a bit, and make sure the bottom of the pan is evenly covered.



Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.



Put the softened butter and the white sugar into a bowl and cream it together to make. . .



MORE BUTTER-Y SUGAR! Man, why even bother with this dumb cake? Just give me a stick of margarine and a bowl of sugar to dip it in.



Pour half of the flour mixture into the bowl of butter-y sugar. Mix it together.



Then pour in the milk. Mix some more



Aaaaand. . . the rest of the flour. Continue mixing.



Once it's sufficiently mixed, pour the batter over the pineapple-y, butter-y sugar in the pan.



Place the pan in the middle of the oven. Close the door.



Set your free 409 kitchen timer that you got from work to 45 minutes. It might take longer if you don't have a state-of-the-art gas oven, like me. Forty-five minutes is a long time to wait. First, I did all the dishes, because it's easier to enjoy your taste-y delight if you're not worrying about the mess you made. That only took ten minutes, though.



So I sat in front of the oven for a bit, eagerly waiting for my cake to be done. I quickly tired of that, however. It's hard to look eager for extended periods of time.



I still had a good half an hour to go, so I made some lunch. Isn't it precious? There's mozzarella, lettuce, and egg-free ranch dressing in that wrap. It's my favourite thing to eat. Ever. I have about four a week.



When forty-five minutes are up, poke the cake with a toothpick. If the toothpick comes out clean, your cake is done. Take it out of the oven, turn the oven off, and let the cake cool in the pan for fifteen minutes. Up until this point, the cake has been fairly right-side up. Not for long, though!



UPSIDE-DOWN!! There's the finished cake. Mine turned out pretty darn well. You can really taste the upside-down-ness in every bite.

posted by Anna Torborg at 06:43 AM |