Exploring My Artistic Talents in Baking

Yesterday I baked a pineapple upside-down cake, actually two of them.  I cannot remember the last time I made one of these cakes, if ever.  The whole process was actually a lot simpler than I had imagined.  Because, well let's be honest, who really bakes a cake from scratch anymore?  So I thought I was in for a ton of work.  Boy, was I pleasantly surprised!   

I used this recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook and only noticed the suggestions after I was done.  I thought it was quite appropriate given that I had already taken that liberty.  So, maybe I am a true "artist".

So I started by melting the butter in the baking dish.  Oh, the aroma of melted butter, mmm, need I say more?

Then I practiced my pineapple arranging skills before placing them in the dish just to make sure the picture I had in my head would actually work.  And mostly because I was intending the finished designed to come out legible so I had to create it backwards so that after the "flip" it would read "30" and NOT "0E". 

After sprinkling in the brown sugar over the melted butter, in goes the pineapple.   Then mix up the batter and,...

Pour it over the pineapple and bake it.  After it's done, immediately flip it onto a plate. I did learn a few lessons while creating this: 

1) always, ALWAYS check to make sure you have ALL of the ingredients on hand (even if you did the day before).  I ran out of sugar and ended up using about 1/4 cup of powered sugar to have enough. 

2) I should have used a larger platter when flipping it over.  It gets very syrup-ey (let's just say my sister was not too happy because she had just mopped, but my dog enjoyed it!) 

Here's what the finished cake looked like.

And 3) the pineapple doesn't stand out against the cake as much as I envisioned and I should have used more pieces of it.  But, mmm does it taste good!  It's caramelly and gooey and sweet and yummy.  I enjoyed it!