Pineapple Downside Up Cakes

John's favorite cake is Pineapple Upside Down cake. When looking for things to register for the wedding, I saw a pan that makes mini cakes in the shapes of pineapples and immediately registered for it (as well as a cast iron skillet to make the cake in). Well, at the shower, I was very happy to unwrap the pan and it was given to us by one of John's siblings. His brother then gave us a tin of pineapple to facilitate making the cake. :)

John was so happy to get this pan that one day while I was at work and he was cleaning and putting the presents away, he decided to try out the pan. Below is the making of the cake, as taken by John.

The left over pineapple turned into his dinner.








His trusty beer was his baking assistant.













Then he waited patiently for dessert to be ready.








And finally his efforts were rewarded. :)

And the cakes were tasty. We think we can find a better cake recipe (we used the one that came with the pan) but I think that we are definitely up for the challenge.

Thanksgiving

OK, Thanksgiving was over a week ago, but I am a bit slow on the posting lately. On Saturday, we had some people over to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was my second time cooking a turkey and like last time, it got done early. However, not believing that it could be done, I let it cook longer. It ended up a bit overcooked but it still tasted good.

To help John and me out, our friend N came over around noon. By this time, we had been up since 9:00 AM trying to get a bit of cleaning done and defrosting the turkey. This year, we had a cooler that the turkey fit in so we filled it with water and let it defrost. We changed the water every 30 minutes to try to keep it as sanitary as possible. While the turkey defrosted, we cleaned and did other meal prep. Shortly after N arrived, it was time to put the turkey in. However, the inside was still frozen! I ran lots of cold water on it until it thawed, rinsed it out, patted it dry and put it on the baking rack. It was then that I noticed an extra pack of "stuff" in the turkey. And this stuff was frozen in a plastic bag. That meant running the turkey under more cold water, rinsing it again, and drying it again before seasoning it. We eventually got it all thawed out, seasoned it and got it in the oven.

Around 4:00 PM, the other guests started showing up. We ate at 5:00. We had turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, green bean casserole, corn, jelly (jello) with pineapple, bread, pumpkin pie, apple crisp (I didn't have enough pie pans), and pecan pie. We all ate until we were stuffed an couldn't eat anymore. Then people just drank more. The last people left about 1:30AM! All in all, it was a good meal, good fun, and good people. (but I forgot to take pictures)

Electric stoves stink

I love to cook. Today I spent two hours in the kitchen making cookies, home made barbeque sauce, barbeque chicken and mashed potatoes. It was quite yummy.

Because I love to cook, I have always used gas stoves and ovens (cookers). Back home when looking for an apartment, I would phone the places and ask what type of stove the apartment had. If the response was electric, I wouldn't even go see the apartment! I like gas stoves better because you can control the heat level precisely and you can also see when the burner is on. When you turn the burner off, the heat goes away so burners don't stay hot like they do on an electric stove top.

Yesterday, we got home late and I made a quick pasta and sauce. I dished up John's and my food and went to pick up John's plate and ended up dropping it on the stove. The food fell all over the floor. Caineal enjoyed it while we cleaned it up and I dished up the what was supposed to be the left overs for lunch today for John to eat. I dropped the plate because I set it on the hot burner but I forgot that was the burner that I used to cook the pasta.

Today, I set the bowl that the chicken was marinating in on the stove since there wasn't counter space to put it as I peeled the potatoes. After a few minutes, I started to smell a nasty smell. I didn't understand why and finally moved the bowl to find it partially melted! I had turned on the wrong burner. That wouldn't have happened if I had a gas stove.

Also, I have burned myself at least 5 times since I moved here. While that may not sound like a lot, I can't remember the last time (before I moved here) that I had burned myself cooking. Ah, someday I should adjust...

what should I bake?

In a week, I get a new oven. I am very excited about this. However, I want help figuring our what to bake first. Should I bake:
a) pineapple diamonds
b) brownies
c) cookies of some sort
d) apple crisp

Happy Birthday John!

Saturday was John's birthday. To celebrate, I made him lasagna and we had some of my friends over for dinner. John wanted a pot luck but I misunderstood. He wanted everyone to bring "their signature dish." I thought pot luck was everyone brings a dish and we coordinate what to bring so that their aren't duplicates and the foods go together. My friends all agreed with me so we had lasnagna, salad, garlic bread, pecan pie, and pineapple upside down cake. M made the cake from her new cookbook that I gave her last week for her birthday. She was very excited about it because I don't know if she has baked a cake before and had never heard of anything like pineapple upside down cake!

The lasasgna turned out pretty well. I made two: one meatastic and one vegetable. The meatastic one had this "bacon" that was packaged similar to breakfast sausage in the States. Given the similarity of packaging, I thought it would be a similar product. Nope. It was basically spam in plastic wrap. It looked nasty but tasted OK in the lasagna. John said it tasted good and that is what matters.

Cooking the lasagna went better than baking the cake last week. John figured out how to get the oven door to open better so I made him open it each time to check on the lasagna and garlic bread. He hadn't realized how broken the oven door was. Basically, the two pieces of the door are coming apart. The repair people said that they will come on Monday. I get to work from home all day to wait for the technician to show up. That should be fun.

The food was good, the company was good and I think John had a good birthday. He said he did anyway. :)

baking a cake

On Friday it was my friend M's birthday. She invited John and I over for dinner and planned to have some of her other friends over as well. They ended up having other plans like travelling in the U.S. and around the world. Pesky travelling.

M made a traditional South African dish, babuti, for dinner. It is similar to meatloaf but is flavored with curry and has raisins in it. It is also served with sliced bananas and cocunut. Now, coconut, banana, and ground beef may not sound good together but it was really good. I had a very small serving at fist since I have only had beef a few times since 1992! However, it was really good and had a mild flavor. I was surprised but I liked it. It had good texture and flavor. I ate my whole serving.

For dessert, I made M a lemon layer cake. While home for Christmas, I had gotten her a cookbook and measuring cups/spoons to give her for her birthday. The cake recipe was in this cookbook so I made a copy of it on Friday so I didn't mess up her cookbook. On Saturday, I looked at the recipe and sent John to the store for everything I needed to make the cake. I started looking at the recipe and my cake pans. The cake was supposed to be three layers but I didn't have the correct sized pans. I had one 9-inch pan so at John's suggestion, I put as much water into the pan as I would cake batter and then poured it into the other two pans I had to see if they all had roughly the same volume. They did so I greased and floured them.

I mixed all the ingredients together and stated to pour the cake batter into the first pan. After filling it about half full, I realized that there wasn't enough batter for three layers so I poured the rest of the batter into the second pan. I then put the two round layer pans into the oven. I can only bake on the very bottom of the oven so the pans had to fit on the same rack or they would have to bake one at a time. Since I didn't have time to bake the cakes separately, I poured the batter into my new mini bundt pan that I got for Christmas. This pan has to be set onto a baking sheet when it is in the oven because it is silicone. So, I got out a baking sheet, slid it under the first pan, trying to make the cake as even as possible and then slid the small bundt cake pan onto the tray also.

15 minutes later, it was time to rotate the cakes. My oven is crap. It is a fan oven which means it blows lots of air and has different settings that I still haven't figured out because the labels of all the dials have worn off. So, I have vaguely figured out which setting to use to bake things on the bottom rack. However, I have to rotate anything that I bake around in the oven because it still heats unevenly. If I leave anything in one place, half of the food will be burned and the other half uncooked! So anyway, after 15 minutes I do the first rotate and check the cake because my oven also sometimes bakes/cooks things really fast.

As I open the door, I realize that the handle is pulling away from the oven door. This is bad. I opened the door carefully, rotated the cakes, and put them back in the oven. I then do the same thing 15 minutes later. The oven door appears more loose and the front plate of glass seems hotter than usual. I send a text to my landlord letting her know that the oven door is breaking.

My friend M calls me to give me the details about the evening. While we are talking and I tell her I am baking her cake, the fire alarm starts to go off for no apparent reason. There is not smoke in the apartment but this is the most sensitive smoke alarm I have ever encountered. So we got off the phone, I took care of the alarm and turn the fan above the stove on high speed to suck up the imaginary smoke.

Then the timer went off and the cakes were done. I take one out of the oven just fine. The other wasn't done yet so I put it back in the oven and let it bake. The cake was done a few minutes later and when I opened the door, the front glass oven door came out from the handle and touched my knee! I managed to get the cake out and keep the oven door from falling out all the way. Unfortantely, John was at the store looking for powdered sugar so he couldn't help me. A couple minutes later my landlord called and I tried to explain what was wrong.

The repair people are supposed to call me to set up an appointment. I haven't heard from them yet...

But back to the cake. I let it cool and made the frosting. I then tried to frost it. This was difficult because I put a lot of lemon filling between the two layers. Anyway, after effort, I got the cake frosted and it tasted excellent! It was one of my better cakes.

lasagna

Last night I made lasagna and garlic bread. They were quite tasty. There were two pieces of lasagna and one piece of garlic bread left over so I took some for lunch today. Everyone in the staff room was very interested in my lasagna. They all asked how I made it, what cheeses I put in it, why, and why the noodles were so wide. I explained that that is how lasagna is made. They didn't seem to understand. I finally explained that the noodles are wide so that they can form a layer for the fillings. They seemed happy with this answer. They were also amazed that I made my own sauce for it and confused as to how I would do this. I tried to explain that it was actually quite simple. They didn't believe me.

I guess my lunch was just much better than the sandwiches they all ate. I just felt a bit like an anomaly since it seemed like none of them had seen lasagna made this way before. Granted it is different than they make it in the restaurants but not that different.