Pineapple Upside Down Cake – Small Batch Baking

My Mom has been pestering me to bake her favorite dessert: Pineapple Upside Down Cake. 

But I’m on a low-carb diet (curses) and can’t help her devour a whole cake, so what is a girl to do?

HA! She pulls out her handy, dandy, Small-Batch Baking book. This book is neat because the recipes are scaled back so they make only enough for 1 or 2 servings. But don’t mistakenly think that these recipes are easy just because they make a small quantity. This Upside Down Cake was involved, and packed with a shopping list of ingredients. 

Here is the upside-down pineapple portion. You have to brown 1-1/2 teaspoons of butter in two jumbo muffin cups, mix the pineapple and brown sugar and then spread the pineapple mixture on top of the browned butter. 

The batter called for 3 tablespoons of buttermilk. Buttermilk! Who keeps that in their frig? 

I sure don’t, but I do keep powered buttermilk on hand. In baked goods this stuff tastes as good as the real thing, and there is no waste! The only head scratcher is trying to figure out how much powder to put the small batch recipe. I have to admit I needed a calculator for this one.

So here is the batter going into the oven… 

And the cakes coming out… 

I had some trouble with the center of the cakes cooking so the edges got a little brown. I finally had to turn down the oven temperature and covering the cakes with aluminum foil. The bottom and sides came out a little crispy, but the inside was nice a moist. 

And tasted delicious, according to my Mom.  I was a good girl and stuck to my diet. Not even a crumb of those evil carbs touched my lips. 

So if you ever want to make an elaborate cake for just 1 or 2, try the Small-Batch Baking book, but be prepared to get a lot of bowls dirty and dig out those teeny, tiny 1/8 teaspoon measuring spoons. 

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Sprinkles Cupcake Mix - Review

I attended a friend's baby shower recently, and came home with a tube/box of Sprinkles' Dark Chocolate Cupcake Mix (I won one of the silly shower games). Now I had heard of Sprinkles before but had never tried one of their cupcakes. And honestly after sampling the cupcakes produced from their mix I don't think I would be in a hurry to buy the original. The cupcakes (from the mix) were moist enough, but I found them very bland and unexciting. There was no explosion of flavor or pop of taste, and if I'm paying $14 for a box of cupcake mix I expect an end product that makes my taste buds stand up and sing.


I made the Sprinkles cupcakes for my Mom's 76th birthday party. I always buy her birthday cake from Swiss Confectionery (the BEST tasting cake in New Orleans), but some last minute additions to the party list made me fear that I wouldn't have enough cake (a serious crime in my family). So I pulled the Sprinkles mix from the pantry and whipped up some cupcakes in less than an hour.

I did make one change to the Sprinkles cupcake: I added a cookie crumb crust. I grind up Lorna Doone shortbread cookies, mixed them with sugar and butter, press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the cupcake liner, and bake the crust for five minutes until it sets. My Mom LOVES cupcakes with cookie crust.


Next came the mixing of the Sprinkles cupcake batter. The sequence of mixing was a little different than normal. 1) Cream the butter then added the dry mix to the butter, 2) add the eggs, 3) and finally the milk. The batter was thick and luscious looking, but even at this point it was a little lacking in flavor.


I spooned the batter on top of my pre-baked cookie crust, and then baked the cupcakes for 20 minutes. My oven runs a little hot so I always remove my baked goods at the lower end of the baking range.


I didn't think the trademark Sprinkles "dot" looked festive enough for a birthday party, so I skipped the blue and black dot and used my own sprinkles.


Looks cute, but taste-wise the cupcake was unremarkable. Even the cookie crust and luscious frosting wasn't enough to perk up flavor of the Sprinkles cupcake.

Wilton's Giant Cupcake Pan

A friend’s 13 year-old daughter asked me to bake her birthday cake.

ME!

I was so excited. I bake cakes for my family, but this is the first time (well may be second) that someone outside the immediate family asked me to bake a celebration cake.

Here it is.


Ashlyn was very specific, she wanted a giant cupcake as her birthday cake. I went to Wal-Mart to buy Wilton's Giant Cupcake Pan , but Wally-World wanted 30 bucks for the pan. So instead I went to Hobby Lobby and with my 40% off coupon snagged it for $18. (Call me frugal not cheap.) I also bought Wilton’s matching Jumbo Cupcakes Pan. Like the giant pan, the jumbo pan also bakes the cupcake in two parts. Don’t you just love matching stuff?


The information sheet that came with the Giant Cupcake Pan said that one box of cake mix wasn't enough to fill the pan, so I mixed up two boxes and filled the giant cupcake and three of the jumbo cupcakes. While baking, the batter overflowed the top of the pans so I probably should have filled all four of the jumbo cupcake wells instead of three. Oh well, live and learn. In the end I just trimmed off the tops of the cakes and munched for two days on scraps.




On Amazon a bunch of people have reviewed the pan, and some commented that the top and bottom sections do not bake evenly and the baked cake stuck to the pan. I didn't experience either problem. I filled the giant pan to capacity and baked at 325 degrees for 55 minutes (electric convection oven). The sides of the cake came out dark brown (like a bundt cake) but the insides were thoroughly cooked. At the party I sampled the top and bottom sections and both were fine. The top was slightly "dry" and the bottom was slightly "moist", so I just let people know ahead of time and they selected a piece according to their personal preference.

I also didn't have a problem with the cake sticking to the pan. I used Wilton's Cake Release and dusted with a little flour just to be sure. After removing the pan from the oven, I let it cool for three minutes and then flipped the pan over. The cakes slid out without any problem.

Next came the decorating. I did a search on the web, and found a few examples of decorated giant cupcakes. My absolute favorite was choo_silwhui's posting on flickr. I loved the colors and the daisies perched on one side. Too cute.

Here I am rolling out my gum paste and cut a few yellow daisies, some green leaves and confetti dots.


Then I started to ice my giant cupcake. Someone on Amazon recommended that you ice the bottom section before placing the top, so that is what I did. I piped one row using Wilton tip #12 (smooth round) and then a second row using tip 32 (fluted round).



Next I positioned the top.



I used the same Wilton Tip #32 and piped an almost continuous stream of teal icing around the top. After I finished I realized I didn't like my swirly icing job as much as I liked choo_siowhui's smooth top. I thought about scraping the icing off and trying for the smooth look, but in the end I left it the way it was.

Next I added the gum paste decorations. Sorry, I got into the groove and forgot to take pictures of my progress so here it is after all the decorations were added.


You might have noticed that the cake started out on a gold cake board and then switched to a glass platter. After I had the thing totally decorated I decided that the teal and yellow decorations clashed with the gold cake board. I don't like things that clash, so I carefully moved the cake from the board to the glass platter. I was lucky, no major catastrophes.

Finally I added a Happy Birthday and a few of the leftover flowers to the platter.



And here is the birthday girl, Ashlyn, blowing out her candles. I also decorated the jumbo cupcakes to match the cake. She really got a kick out of that.



Happy Birthday, Ashlyn.

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Beachy Cupcakes

My niece was having a luau theme for her 9th birthday party so I decide to make some beachy cupcakes. I had grand visions of surf boards, tiki huts, volcanoes, and big toothy sharks adorning the tops of my cupcakes, but reality and my lack of time management skills did me in once again. By party time I had only managed to make a few malformed flip flops, a single lei, and some lame beach towels.

Oh well, at least my water and sand looked good (this time).

A few months back I made a Hawaiian themed bridal shower cake and I did learn a few things from that experience.

Lesson #1 - For the mock “sand” it is better to use crushed cookies and not raw sugar. I used sugar the first time and made a huge mess. The grains just wouldn’t stick to the butter cream icing and kept falling off in damp hunks.

Lesson #2 - Dye the icing that goes under the sand a light brown in color. If you leave it white, it shows through the “sand”. I know you think I’m one dumb decorator (cake wrecks here I come), but honestly I didn’t think to dye the icing the first time around. I thought the “sand” would be thick enough to cover all the white icing.



Lesson #3 - Press the crumbled cookies into the icing as soon as you spread it. If you wait too long the buttercream starts to crust and the “sand” won’t stick.

Lesson #4 - When dyeing the water, don’t mix it too much. Stir the icing until it is a swirl of blue and white. This way when you spread the “water” on the cupcakes, you have built in, natural looking white caps.




Happy Birthday, Amanda! I hope you like your cupcakes.

Red White & Blue Cupcakes

What would a 4th of July BBQ be without brightly colored cupcakes?




Don't you just love these Wilton cupcake liners?

I took the easy route for these cupcakes and used a box white cake mix. I divided the batter into three bowls and dyed one bowl of batter bright red and another bright blue.



Then just spoon about a tablespoon of each color into the cupcake liner, bake them for 18 minutes, and voila you get multi-colored 4th of July cupcakes. So cute, and easy too.

Oreo Cookie n' Cream Cupcakes

This weekend I was able to kill two proverbial baking birds with one stone. I tested my fifth Yellow Cake recipe from the Cake Central June "Scratch-Off", and I tried to recreate a wonderful looking Cookies n' Cream cupcake I had seen on a blog a few months back.

Here is the end product…



So what do you think?

They look pretty good, but honestly I was a little disappointed in the overall experience. Both the cookies baked inside the cupcakes and the pieces arranged on top of the icing got very mushy and soggy. I know, I know, with all the moisture from the cake batter and icing the cookies were bound to get soft, but I naively expected the cookies to stay crisp. I wanted to bite into that cupcake and hear a satisfying cookie crunch, but instead all I got was a silent squish.

Sigh, some people are never satisfied.

Well, here's how it looks on the inside. Just remember squishy not crunchy.

Strawberry Filled Cupcakes

My second adventure on Strawberry Memorial Day Weekend was Strawberry Filled Cupcakes.

Pretty…


The cupcake "cake" is my third attempt at duplicating the famous White Almond Wedding Cake from Swiss Confectionery in New Orleans. Cake version #3 was good, but still not Swiss (too dense). I’ll try again some other day, but the real purpose of the cupcake was to try different “filling” methods.

The Cone Method – I used a knife and cup a cone shape out of the top of the cupcake and then cut the “cone” off of the cupcake plug leaving only a cap.



Next I just spooned the strawberry jam into the cavity and covered with the cupcake cap.


I frosted using a standard buttercream recipe, then cut the cupcake in half to see the guts. Here is what the inside looks like using the Cone Method.



The next method I tried was the “Piping Method”. I made two perpendicular cuts in the top of the cupcake using a regular paring knife, and then squeezed the strawberry jam into the opening using Wilton Star Tip 21.


Don’t pipe too much or it will overflow.


Here is the inside of the “Piped” filling method. The piped method was quicker but I think I like the neat look of the “Cone” filling method. I guess it is just a matter of preference because they both tasted the same.



Here is the finished cupcake again. Don’t you just love the sparkly fruit? The recipe called for sanding sugar but I just had regular granulated sugar on hand. The sanding sugar would have look much more sparkly, but you have to work with what ya got. I also forgot to “sugar” the mint leaves. I’m such a scatterbrain sometime.

50th Birthday Wreath

My sister-in-law turned 50 on May 8th and I gave her black wreath (made out of cupcakes of course) to commemorate the day. The idea came from the book "Hello, Cupcake". The cupcakes are Betty Crocker Butter Pecan and the icing is Praline Butter Cream. The leaves are semi-sweet chocolate and the bow is a black satin ribbon.




First I baked the cupcakes according to the box.


Then I cooked the pralines that go into the frosting. Here is a picture of the pralines cooling on the stove. Yum.

And here is a picture of the crumbled pralines being added to the butter cream. Note: I added a little brown food color to the frosting so it would be less obvious beneath the chocolate leaves.

Here I am artfully (ha, ha) arranging the chocolate leaves on top of the cupcakes. To mold the leaves I stripped my pathetic mint plant of all its larger leaves, washed & dried them, and then painted melted chocolate over the surface. Once the chocolate dried, I pealed away the green leaf and was left with a pretty chocolate impression. I think I made about 100 of them. I sure do love my sister-in-law.

Again the finished 50th Birthday Wreath