The good thing about being able to bake well and turn out quality baked goods is that everyone in your family can depend on you to bring something good to a family function. The bad thing about being able to bake well and turn out quality baked goods is that everyone in your family depends on you to bring something good to a family function. I am not saying that I don’t enjoy baking and making desserts, I’m just saying that once you start, realize that your family will come to depend on you to bring a dessert or two, or three. I usually rely on a handful of tried and true desserts that I like to make because I am familiar with all of the steps.

We had a family function on Sunday and I was asked to bring a dessert, which was fine, except that I didn’t have all of the ingredients on hand to make any of my standard desserts. I searched the pantry and came up with a few options, but wanted something that would be decadent. I settled on making a Pineapple Upside Down Cake that turned out to be much better than I expected. The cake was incredibly moist, even though the intended texture of the cake was dense. I followed the recipe to the letter, except for a substitution for the cake flour which I did not have on hand. I found an easy substitute for cake flour by combining cornstarch and all purpose flour. I was pleased that I finally had another use for cornstarch, and that I actually keep it in my pantry.

The cake was super simple. I used a round spring form pan and sprayed the inside with cooking spray so that the cake wouldn’t stick once it came time to release it from the pan. I also placed a sheet pan on the rack just below the spring form pan in anticipation of any leaking from the cake. My foresight paid off, because the sheet pan caught all of the drippings that would have ended up making a huge mess at the bottom of my oven. I actually covered the sheet pan in aluminum foil since I was also not interested in cleaning up the mess there either. This one is definitely being added to my list of desserts I can whip up in no time flat.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 2:30 am and is filed under Baking at Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.