Pineapple Upsidedown Cake Redux

I decided to try again. This time I used the recipe from the Cooking for American Homemakers circa 1947. Once again, the cake rose beautifully and looked amazing...until it was inverted. It flattened out. But, I had seen individual pineapple upside down cakes at a bakery that were just as flat. So, at this point, I am assuming that it is supposed to be that way.

If you look very closely, you can see that the one in the photo from the cookbook is a bit flat.





Yes, I know that it is hard to tell. But it's the best that I could do.

I do consider this cookbook a treasure.





I cannot testify the taste of this one, however, because it is going to church tomorrow. I'll find out then.

ETA: It just occurred to me that I had not posted the recipe. Here it is:

1/2 cup butter
1 c brown sugar
1 No. 2 can sliced pineapple
2 tbs large whole pecans
1 c sifted cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
3 eggs separated
1 c granulated sugar
5 tbs pineapple juice

Melt butter in large baking pan. Spread brown sugar evenly over pan and arrange pineapple slices on sugar, filling in spaces with pecans. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside. Beat egg yolks until light and fluffy; gradually add sugar. Add pineapple juice and flour mixture; fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Pour batter over pineapple. Bake in moderate (375 degree) oven 30 to 35 minutes. Turn upside down on cake plate. Serve with whipped cream if desired. (9" x 9") cake serves 8.

My notes: I used my 10" iron skillet and instead of pecans, I used maraschino cherries cut in half, about 9.

Liquid Gold

The local Piggly Wiggly had chicken leg quarters on sale for thirty-nine cents per pound. I don't eat chicken legs, but I will eat thighs, so I bought ten pounds. I put half in the freezer and put the other half in the crockpot with my onion scraps, celery, carrots, water, salt and pepper for ten hours on low heat. I took it out of the crockpot and put it in the fridge overnight. This morning, I skimmed off the schmaltz, scooped the broth through a strainer, and shredded the meat.

I'll use the meat for chicken casserole later, but right now I have one beautiful quart of the richest, most delicious chicken stock in the freezer. The possibilities are endless! My cyber buddy Linda's Jewish Pennicillin? Seasoned rice? Seasoned veggies?

Until then....



ETA: Onion scraps. Whenever I have bits of onions left, too little to save for use another time, I put them in a container in the freezer. The same with celery tops and carrot ends. Then, when I'm ready to make broth, I empty out my scraps. I have a very interesting freezer full of veggie scraps and butter wrappers. I use the wrappers to grease pans for baking.

Blueberry Clafoutis and Dainty Sugar Cookies

Well, I've been very busy lately. I've done bit of cooking but haven't really had time to post anything, so I'm doubling up.

I went to a shrimp boil last week and our hosts asked that we bring sides and desserts. I made some wonderful marinated tomatoes but decided that I had time to make a dessert. I may or may not have mentioned my stockpile of blueberries in the past, but I am slowly working my way through them. I decided that I had everything I needed to make a clafoutis and went in search of a good recipe. I settled on this basic recipe from Epicurious.

Basic Clafoutis
INGREDIENTS
1 cup whole milk
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
PREPARATION
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and butter until the sugar is dissolved. Add the flour and whisk until smooth. Pour the batter into a cast iron skillet or pie pan.
2. Now add your favorite fruit or flavoring (see below). Bake until the clafoutis is beautifully puffed and golden, 35–40 minutes. Serve immediately.

Clafoutis Variations:
Concord Grape Clafoutis: Once the batter is in the skillet, scatter 2 cups slightly crushed Concord or other black or red grapes on top.
Cherry Clafoutis: Scatter 2 cups pitted cherries onto the batter once it's poured into pie plates.
Pear Clafoutis with Pear Eau de Vie: Core 1 ripe pear and cut into pieces. Pour the batter into the skillet and top with the pear pieces. Bake. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons eau de vie and serve immediately.

This is the finished product.



This is a very easy dessert that looks elegant. Serve it with a little whipped cream and yummy!

This week I have a meeting at church on Saturday, Knit, Crochet, Pray!, where we will make scarves for the homeless.Since it was my idea, I am hostessing so I decided to make some cookies. I found this recipe on the Proboard I belong to, Contessa's Kitchen, which was submitted by one of the members with the handle "Soushi".

Dainty Sugar Cookies

1 C. butter

1 C. shortening

1 C. powdered sugar

1 C. white sugar

2 t. vanilla

4 1/2 C. flour

1 t. cream of tartar

1 t. baking soda

Mix well. Roll into small balls. Place on cookie sheet (I used parchment paper). Flatten with a glass (bottom side) that has been dipped in white sugar (one dip for each cookie) Bake 10 minutes at 350 degrees or until lightly browned.

I used the 1/2 tablespoon measuring spoon and they are about the size of vanilla wafers. They are very sweet and will be great with tea or coffee, I think. This size made about 7 dozen.





I give both recipes two thumbs up! And it is so nice to have a success.

Martha, Martha, Martha

I am so disappointed!

I love to watch cooking shows and Martha Bakes is one of my favorites. I want to be a baker. I want to make beautiful cakes. I want to create pastry that will make your eyes roll back in your head. So, to that end, I decided that I wanted to try to make an Italian Meringue Buttercream frosting. I made a chocolate cake. A perfectly wonderful, delicious chocolate cake using a Natalie Dupree recipe. I found several recipes for the frosting, but decided to use Martha Stewart's recipe because Martha has never let me down.

Until now.

This frosting ruined my cake. It was awful. It tasted like pure butter.

Martha Stewart's Italian Meringue Buttercream Frosting

1 1/4 cups sugar
5 large egg whites
Pinch of cream of tartar
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring sugar and 2/3 cup water to a boil. Continue boiling until syrup reaches 238 degrees on a candy thermometer (soft-ball stage).
Meanwhile, place egg whites in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, and beat on low speed until foamy. Add cream of tartar, and beat on medium-high speed until stiff but not dry; do not overbeat.
With mixer running, add syrup to whites in a stream, beating on high speed until no longer steaming, about 3 minutes. Add butter bit by bit, beating until spreadable, 3 to 5 minutes; beat in vanilla. If icing curdles, keep beating until smooth.

So I checked Buddy Valastro's recipe.

Cake Boss Italian Meringue Buttercream Frosting

INGREDIENTS:

8 extra-large egg whites
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
4 cups (8 sticks) usalted butter, at room temperature, cut into small cubes
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

PREPARATION:
Put the whites in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment.
Put 1-1/2 cups of the sugar and the water in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-hight heat, stirring with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. Continue to cook, without stirring, and bring to the soft ball stage (240 degrees Fahrenheit).
Meanwhile, whip the whites at high speed until soft peaks form, approximately 5 minutes. With the motor running, add the remaining 1/2 cup sugar gradually, continuing to whip until medium peaks form.
When the sugar reaches 240 degrees Fahrenheit, with the motor running, pour it into the egg whites, very slowly, in a thin stream, to avoid cooking the eggs. Raise the speed to high, and continue to whip until the mixture has cooled to room temperature, 10 to 15 minutes.
Stopping the motor between additions, add the butter in five increments, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula before adding each addition of butter. With the motor running, add the vanilla, and whip just until it is blended in. (The buttercream can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to one week. Let it come to room temperature and paddle briefly before using.)

See the difference? I cannot help but think that the additional egg whites, sugar, and vanilla only improve the taste.

I will try Buddy's recipe in the future, specifically when I feel like using up a pound of butter. But I can highly recommend the cake recipe:

Everybody's Favorite Chocolate Cake
Natalie Dupree's Matters of Taste

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
2 t. vanilla
1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350*. Grease three 8 in. or two 9 inch pans or a 13 x 9 inch pan. Line the bottom of the pans with wax paper cut to fit. Grease and flour the paper.

Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the oil, buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Stir in the boiling water until blended. The batter will be thin.

Pour the batter evenly into the prepared pan. Bake 30 - 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in the pans on wire racks 5 minutes. Remove the cakes from the pans and finish cooling them on wire racks.

I refuse to even show a picture of this one.

Oh, Martha! Why?

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Semi-Fail

It was a very hot and humid day and I had no desire to spend any time at all outside. Since I had all of the ingredients on hand, I went searching the internet for a recipe for pineapple upside down cake. I found this one.

Old Fashioned Pineapple Upside Down Cake

INGREDIENTS:
4 eggs
1/2 cup butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 (20 ounce) can sliced pineapple
10 maraschino cherries, halved
1 cup sifted cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 teaspoon almond extract
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a 10-inch heavy skillet with a heat-resistant handle (I use a cast iron skillet),


My grandmother's iron skillet.

melt 1/2 cup butter over very low heat. Remove from heat, and sprinkle brown sugar evenly over pan. Arrange pineapple slices to cover bottom of skillet. Distribute cherries around pineapple; set aside.



3. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. Separate the eggs into two bowls. In a large bowl, beat egg whites just until soft peaks form. Add granulated sugar gradually, beating well after each addition. Beat until medium-stiff peaks form. In a small bowl, beat egg yolks at high speed until very thick and yellow. With a wire whisk or rubber scraper, using an over-and-under motion, gently fold egg yolks and flour mixture into whites until blended. Fold in 1 tablespoon melted butter or margarine and almond extract. Spread batter evenly over pineapple in skillet.



5. Bake until surface springs back when gently pressed with fingertip and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 to 35 minutes. Loosen the edges of the cake with table knife. Cool the cake for 5 minutes before inverting onto cake plate.



I had trouble with the egg whites. It took forever to reach medium peaks and before I knew it, I had stiff peaks. I'm sure that had something to do with it. And I cannot, for the life of me, figure out where all of the cherries went! I have an old cookbook that belonged to my Aunt Mary that was published in 1948 and I checked the recipe in it. The sugar is added to the yolks in it, so I think that may have been the problem. On the bright side, the taste is yummy.

I think that I will try again, sometime, but use the recipe in Aunt Mary's cookbook. Maybe that will help.

The Best Laid Plans...

Or what I like to call "cooking ADD".

I did a mental run-down of the ingredients available to me while trying to decide what to cook for dinner...ground turkey, mixed veggies, onions, tomatoes, tomato paste...I decided to try my hand at hand pies. It sounded like fun and was something that I had never made before. I searched the internet for a good recipe and found a Martha Steward recipe that sounded pretty good.

But the thought of hand pies reminded me of my Aunt Alma's fried apple pies.

Aunt Alma had a learning disability (my best guess is that she was dyslexic) and could neither read nor write. There are no hand written copies of her recipes, but she was an amazing cook. And her fried apple pies were to die for. Aunt Alma and Uncle Fred would go to my Uncle Ed and Aunt Mary's farm and pick apples in the heat of summer. They would take them home, peel them, slice them, and lay them on newspapers on the shelf in the back of their 1963 Chevrolet Impala until they were perfectly dried. She would reconstitute the dried apples in a pot with a little water, lots of sugar and cinnamon, and finish it off with a little butter.

Uncle Ed is standing behind my grandmother in this photo, that is my dad holding me beside him, and Aunt Alma is the beauty in the white color. I love this picture because it has my grandmother with all of her living children.


She would make a dough much like a biscuit dough and fill them with the apple mixture. She fried them an iron skillet. They appeared at family reunions and disappeared quickly, but Aunt Alma always had a bundle for my dad and I stashed away.

I loved those pies.

I've tried over the years to duplicate them and have come close, but never fully succeeded. Possibly the fact that the apples weren't from Uncle Ed's farm. that they weren't hand dried, or the fact that I could only try to guess the proportions.

So, while preparing the dough for my hand pies I looked over and saw a bowl of peaches sitting on the counter.

So I decided to try fried peach pies.

The Filling:

2 c peeled and diced ripe peaches
1 c sugar
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 c warm water
3 Tbs corn starch

Mix corn starch in water and set aside. Cook peaches, sugar, and lemon juice until sugar is melted. Add corn starch mixture and cinnamon and bring to a boil. Cook until thick and remove from heat. Allow to cool.

The pastry:

2 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 c cold butter cut into 1/2" dice
1 tsp kosher salt
1 large egg
1 1/2 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 c cold water

Mix together flour and salt. Using a pastry cutter, mix butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Add egg to water and beat slightly. Add liquids to flour mixture and work with hands until it comes together. shape into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Place in fridge for a minimum of 1 hour. Roll between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick and cut into 4" rounds. Place filling in the middle, fold over and seal with a fork along the edges. Refrigerate approx 20 minutes.

Heat approx 2" of oil (canola) to 350 degrees and fry pies two at a time. Place on paper towel lined plate.

I had lots of filling left because the pastry only made 4 pies.

I decide to make a cheesy macaroni for supper. I'll get around to making hand pies one day.

Happy 4th of July!

Or Cookie Decorating Fail.

So in preparation of the holiday, I decided to try docking, flooding, and piping cookies. In my imagination they would be as elegant and beautiful as anything Martha Stewart ever produced. I started by making Ina Garten's shortbread cookies. That did not turn out as well as it should have.

Ingredients

3/4 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together the butter and 1 cup of sugar until they are just combined. Add the vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and salt, then add them to the butter-and-sugar mixture. Mix on low speed until the dough starts to come together. Dump onto a surface dusted with flour and shape into a flat disk, about 1-inch thick. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes, until firm but still pliable.

Roll the dough 1/2-inch thick on a lightly floured surface and cut with a 3-by-1-inch finger-shaped cutter. Place the cookies on an ungreased baking sheet and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the edges begin to brown. Allow to cool to room temperature.

You will note that the cooking time listed is 20-25 minutes. I set the timer for 20 minutes and pulled the cookies out early because they were too brown. The next batch went in for 18 minutes and then came out early be cause they were still a little too brown. Finally, I started checking at about 13 minutes and took them out of the oven at 16 minutes.

I made Julia Usher's recipe for Royal Icing found here. Mine was far thinner than hers and required adding more Confectioner's sugar. Also, it took a lot of gel color to get anywhere near the color I wanted.

The recipe for the Royal Icing

2 lbs Confectioner's Sugar (1 used about 1/2 cup more)
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
5 pasteurized egg whites
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

The next challenge was the parchment paper piping bags, found in this video. Blue and white were okay, but the red ran all over my hand.

Things I have learned....

You need a very steady hand.

I do not have a very steady hand.

Flooding is easy, piping is not.





My very ugly, yet quite tasty, 4th of July cookies. Martha Stewart...your career is safe. For now.