The Cake Slice presents: Pineapple Upside-down Cake

Guess what! I got kicked out of The Cake Slice a few weeks ago. Nuh uh, no way! Yes way, I totally did. Working at a cupcakery kept me extremely busy over the holidays. As a result, I didn't have time to squeeze The Cake Slice recipes into my holiday baking. Since I missed three months in a row they booted me. But I had a good excuse and they took me back. YAY! So here is this month's cake! And it was totally delicious. Put it this way, I made it on the 18th, and by the 19th, IT WAS GONE! Success!I love this recipe because the cake itself is not too sweet. So the buttery, brown sugary syrup that soaks into the cake isn't overwhelming. I took some to work and everyone said it was really yummy. Wendi even broke her diet to try it. Double success!!Thanks, Cake Slice, for letting me back in! :D Check out what the other Cake Slicer's came up with: The Cake Slice Bakers!Pineapple Upside-Down Cake (from "Southern Cakes" by Nancie McDermott)
Makes 1 9" or 10" round cake

Pineapple Topping
One 20-ounce can pineapple rings, with their syrup or juice
4 tbsp cold butter
2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
10 maraschino cherries

Cake
1½ cups all purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
1½ tsp baking powder
½ salt
½ cup milk
4 tbsp butter, softened
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 350F.

To make the topping, drain the pineapple well, reserving 2 tablespoons of the juice or syrup for the cake batter. Melt the cold butter in a 10 inch cast iron skillet over medium heat. Or, put the butter in a 9inch round cake pan and put it in the oven for a few minutes as the heat melts the butter.

Remove the pan from the oven or stove and sprinkle the brown sugar over the buttery surface. Place the pineapple rings carefully on top of the scattered brown sugar and melted butter, arranging them so they fit in 1 layer. (You may have a few left over). Place a cherry in the centre of each ring, and set the pan aside.

To make the cake, in a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Use a fork to mix them together well. Add the milk and butter and beat well with a mixer, scraping down the bowl once or twice until you have a thick, fairly smooth batter, about 1 to 2 minutes.

Add the egg, reserved pineapple syrup or juice and the vanilla. Beat for 2 minutes more, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides.

Carefully pour the batter over the pineapple arranged in the skillet or cake pan and use a spoon to spread it evenly to the edges of the pan. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until the cake is golden brown and springs back when touched lightly in the centre. Cool in the skillet or pan for 5 minutes on a wire rack.

With oven mitts, carefully turn out the warm cake onto a serving plate by placing the plate upside down over the cake in the pan and then flipping them over together to release the cake onto the plate. Serve warm or at room temperature.

The Cake Slice presents: Burnt Sugar Cake

First, sorry this is late. I was supposed to post on Nov. 20th, but with the holidays approaching things got a little crazy. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. My vacation was wonderful, and we had lots of fun shopping on Black Friday! Now, onto the cake.....

I actually made this cake earlier in the month, but I'm just getting around to writing about it! It was delicious, and Josh loved it (which is always a good sign because he's usually a non-dessert person). The cake layers were soft and moist and had a wonderfully strong burnt sugar taste. The frosting was way too runny and sugary. So you know me, I made SMBC instead. Since I used all the burnt sugar syrup in the runny frosting fiasco, I made a homemade dark caramel sauce and just added it a little at a time to my SMBC until I got the flavor I was looking for. The end result was a gorgeous, amber-colored cake with silky smooth burnt sugar frosting! To get a look at what the other Cake Slicers came up with, check out The Cake Slice blogroll.

The burnt sugar syrup...

Burnt Sugar Cake (from "Southern Cakes" by Nancie McDermott)

Burnt Sugar Syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup boiling water

Heat the sugar in a cast iron skillet or another heavy bottomed pan with high sides. Heat over a medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar melts into a clear brown caramel syrup. It should be the color of tea.
Gradually add the boiling water, pouring it down the sides of the pan so that if the syrup foams and bubbles up, you should be protected.
Continue cooking, stirring often, until the water combines with the syrup and turns a handsome brown syrup.
Remove from the heat and set aside to cool. Store the cooled syrup in a sealed jar if not using right away.

Burnt Sugar Cake
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup milk
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup Burnt Sugar Syrup (recipe above)

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt and stir with a fork to mix well. Stir the vanilla into the milk.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and the sugar with an electric mixer at high speed for 2–3 minutes, until they are well combined. Stop now and then to scrape the bowl down. Add the eggs, one by one, beating well each time. Pour in 1/2 cup of the burnt sugar syrup and beat well.
Add a third of the flour mixture and about half of the milk, beating at a low speed, until just incorporated. Mix in another third of the flour and the rest of the milk. Finally, add the remaining flour.
Divide the batter between the cake pans and bake for 20 to 25 minutes until the cakes are golden brown, spring back when touched gently in the center and begin to pull away from the sides of the pan (It took closer to 35 minutes in my oven. This is very strange because usually my oven bakes fast...??).
Let the cakes cool in the pans on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Turn out the cakes onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Burnt Sugar Frosting
3 3/4 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 cup Burnt Sugar Syrup (above)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 – 3 tbsp milk

In a large bowl, combine the confectioners sugar, the burnt sugar syrup, butter and vanilla. Beat with a mixer at medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes, scraping down the bowl now and then to bring the ingredients together.
Add 2 tablespoons of the milk and continue beating until the frosting is thick, soft, smooth and easy to spread. Add a little more sugar if it is thin, and a little more milk if it is too thick.

To Assemble
Place one layer, top side down, on a cake stand or serving plate. Scoop about ¾ cup of the frosting onto the cake and spread to the edges. Place the second cake layer over it, top side down. Frost the sides of the cake, and then the top until it is evenly covered.

The Cake Slice presents: Cinnamon-Pecan Coffee Cake

Hellooooooo Cake Slice! My, how I've missed you so! We just started baking from a new book, and guess what... The first cake isn't a layer cake! (And from the looks of next month's poll, the second won't be a layer cake either...but shhhh... you didn't hear that from me!) Our new book is "Southern Cakes" by Nancie McDermott, and our first recipe chosen is the Cinnamon-Pecan Coffee Cake. Wow, how insanely good did this cake smell in the oven!? As always, I used my new favorite cinnamon that I found at TJ Maxx. The coffee cake tasted great, and the dark, chewy raisins reminded me of an oatmeal raisin cookie. When I tasted the cake by itself, it tasted very plain. But luckily there's plenty of cinnamon-sugar, raisins, and pecans in every bite! Like a few of the other Cake Slicers, I had difficulty spreading the top layer of thick cake batter over the raisin/pecan filling. It looked like I had done it wrong, but once it baked up it looked great! A few things I'd recommend, don't toast your pecans first. The pecans on top get really brown. Also, some of the raisins on top of my cake got extremely dried out in the oven. Next time I'll plump them in boiling water first. Otherwise, a very fine recipe to begin our new year of The Cake Slice! To see the other bakers' coffee cakes, check out The Cake Slice blogroll!

Cinnamon-Pecan Coffee Cake (from Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott)
(I halved this recipe and baked it in an 8 x 8-inch square pan)

For the cinnamon raisin filling
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
3 tbsp all purpose flour
3 tbsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups raisins
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped pecans
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, melted

For the cake
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup milk
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 13 x 9-inch pan.

To make the filling, combine the light brown sugar, flour and cinnamon in a bowl and stir with a fork to mix everything well. Combine the raisins and pecans in another bowl and toss to mix them. Place the cinnamon mixture, nut mixture and melted butter by the baking pan to use later.

To make the cake batter, combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Stir the vanilla into the milk. In a large bowl combine the butter and sugar and beat with a mixer on high speed until pale yellow and evenly mixed, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl to ensure a good mix. Add the eggs and beat for another 2 minutes, scraping down the bowl now and then, until the mixture is smooth and light.

Use a large spoon or spatula to add about a third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir only until the flour disappears. Add a third of the milk and mix in. Repeat twice more until all the flour and milk mixtures have been incorporated. Stir just enough to keep the batter smooth.

Spread half the batter evenly into the prepared pan (it should be a very thick batter). Sprinkle half the cinnamon mixture over the batter followed by half the melted butter. Scatter half the raisins and nuts over the top. Spread the remaining batter carefully over the filling, using a spatula to smooth the batter all the way to the edges of the pan. Top with the leftover cinnamon, butter and nut mixture, covering the cake evenly.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the cake is golden brown, fragrant and beginning to pull away from the edges of the pan. Place the pan on a wire rack and allow to cool in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes before serving in squares right from the pan. The cake is delicious hot, warm or at room temperature.

HTEAC Does Business: "Over the Hill!" 40th Birthday Cake

I'm gonna start a new grouping of posts for my paid orders. I'm calling it HTEAC Does Business (sticking with the theme from my HTEAC Does Dinner section). One of our loyal wing nighters asked me to do her boyfriend John's 40th birthday cake. She wanted to do the "Over the Hill" theme with lots of black frosting. Thank goodness he likes chocolate because it is SO awful trying to make black vanilla buttercream. She told me he loves Reese's and asked me to do a cake and cupcakes using chocolate and peanut butter as the main flavors. For the cake, I used a peanut butter cake recipe from a book I recently got, Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott, and I added some mini chocolate chips to the batter. For the frosting, I used regular decorator's buttercream for the colors. And for the black frosting I made chocolate peanut butter frosting. I hate decorating cakes, and if I didn't have help from my mom (who took a gazillion Wilton classes back in the day and can decorate character cakes in her sleep) this cake would've looked terrible. We teamed up and did a pretty awesome job, considering my mom hasn't done a cake in over 10 years and I absolutely loathe cake decorating.

And if you suck at making flowers like I do, try this method. Use a small star tip (I think I used #18) and make a swirl from the inside out. It looks sorta like a flower!

Now let me talk a little more about this cake recipe. It uses the mixing method of coating the flour with fat before adding the wet ingredients. This prevents the flour from absorbing the wet ingredients and thus prevents the development of gluten. Meaning, you can stop worrying so much about over-mixing your cake batter. At first, this method always made me nervous because it's pounded into our heads that we should never over-mix the batter after the flour is added. But after a bit of practice, I actually prefer this mixing method. This particular recipe is mixed for over 2 1/2 minutes and the cake comes out perfectly soft and moist! It's like a cake miracle! :D

PS: If you only wanna make 6 or 7 cupcakes, make 1/4 of the recipe. (It works, I tried it!)

James McNair's Peanut Cake (from Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott)
Makes 2 9-inch round layers; or about 28 cupcakes [1/4 recipe in green makes about 7 cupcakes]
4 eggs (1 egg)
1 cup milk (1/4 cup)
1/4 cup peanut oil or vegetable oil (1 Tbsp)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (1/2 tsp)
3 cups all-purpose flour (3/4 cup)
1 tablespoon baking powder (3/4 tsp)
1/2 teaspoon salt (omit)
2 cups sugar (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened (2 Tbsp)
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter (not "natural" peanut butter) (2 Tbsp)
3/4 cup semi-sweet mini chocolate chips (my own addition) (1/4 cup)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare baking pans. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, combine eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla and whisk to blend well. Set aside.
Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl of a mixer, and stir with a fork to mix well. Add the sugar and use the mixer at low speed or a fork to mix these dry ingredients together well, about 30 seconds. Add the butter and peanut butter and beat at medium speed until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs, about 45 seconds. Add about 1 1/4 cups of the milk mixture and beat at medium speed for 1 1/2 minutes, and then stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining milk mixture, beat for 30 seconds, stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl, and beat again until creamy smooth, about 30 seconds more. (Fold in the chocolate chips, if using.)
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans and smooth the surface with a rubber spatula. Bake for 25-30 minutes (or 15-17 minutes for cupcakes), until the cake springs back when touched gently in the center and a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool the cakes in the pans on wire racks or folded kitchen towel for 5 to 10 minutes. Then turn out the cakes onto the racks to cool completely.