Pineapple Upside-down Cup Cakes

I like to make birthday cake for my friends.  A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine had his birthday, but the weekend we usually go to play Pathfinder (D&D) was my bridal shower weekend.  I will go over the awesome baking swag I received that weekend in a later blog post.

My friend, requested that I make pineapple upside-down cake, but as cupcakes.  It seemed pretty easy to do, so I did some searching on the interwebs and there are so many recipes that suggest using a box mix.  No way.  I would not, so I continued the search.  I ended up finding a great recipe at spoonful.com, and it can be found here.

First I lined a cupcake pan and put 1 tsp of butter with 1 tsp of brown sugar in each liner and baked it for 3 minutes in a 350 degree oven to create a nice syrup.

I set 1/2 cup of milk and 3/4 stick of butter on the stove over medium heat until the butter melted.  Once it was melted I removed it from the heat and set it aside.

Meanwhile in a large bowl, I combined 1 cup of flour with 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp of salt.

I mixed 2 eggs, 3/4 cup of white sugar and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract in a smaller bowl.

I combined both mixtures and set aside while I dealt with the pineapple topping of these confections.

There are two ingredients that are iconic to this dessert.  Maraschino cherries and canned pineapple.

 I anticipated a problem right away with the pineapple, I had to cut it up i order for it to fit in the cupcake liners.  Thankfully the cherries were already halved.

Once the design was in place, I added the last of the wet into the the batter, and poured on top of the fruit.  I baked these in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.

I let these cool for quite a while before I removed the liners.

They look flippin' perfect!  And the syrup is caramelized so perfectly, the smell was heavenly.

I hope you enjoyed this retro baking adventure, and I promise I'll show off all of the awesome loot I received at my bridal shower.

Enjoy!

A Study in Scarlet

I was requested to make red velvet cupcakes for a birthday at work, so I decided to give it a try.  I've made "velvet" cakes before, and different colors as well, like blue, white, with little success aside from the white velvet.  I thought, why not give red a chance?

I used a recipe by Ina Garten from the Food Network, it can be found here.

I mixed up 1 cup of milk with 1 tsp of white vinegar

1 Tbsp of red liquid food coloring

and 1 tsp of vanilla.  I set it aside.

In a smaller bowl I mixed together 2 1/2 cups of flour

1/4 cup of cocoa powder

1 tsp each of baking powder

baking soda

and kosher salt.

In a large bowl I creamed 1 stick of butter

with 1 1/2 cup of sugar.

I added 2 eggs one at a time.

I added the dry and the wet alternatively until it was fully incorporated.

I baked them in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.

Oh boy, they looked so pretty!

Next I made my usual cream cheese frosting, and that was it!

And they were quite tasty!  I hope you guys enjoyed this post on the colorful side of baking.  Have a Happy Mother's Day, and enjoy!