A Taste of Pineapple

There have been a lot of posts with yellow food in the blog world recently and this is all due to a single, brave woman (Barbara) over at Wino's and Foodies. Barbara is a cancer sufferer and asked the food blogging community to contribute recipes using yellow food for "A Taste of Yellow", a registered event for Lance Armstrong's Livestrong day on May 16th. The purpose of this event is to raise awareness for cancer and cancer research, of which I think there isn't a single person who hasn't been touched by this terrible disease.

I am very fortunate not to have been touched directly by this beast, however my Grandmother died of leukaemia and one of my best friends mother recently passed on, also from cancer. My mother has had some skin cancers removed from her back and neck, which luckily had not metastasized. In addition, as a scientific researcher at NIH, I come into contact with cancer every day, so I felt it important for me to contribute to this event.

I am a little late to the party, with only 2 days left to submit my contribution, however it took me a while to work out what I really wanted to make. I thought about bananas, lemons, cheese, eggs and nothing was grabbing me. I really wanted to do something with passionfruit, but as I have complained in the past, its very hard to come by here in the States. So, I settled on pineapple.



My husband has been asking me for years to make a pineapple upside down cake, as it seemed to really appeal to him and he had never had one before. I had never taken him up on this request and thought this would be a good time to do so. But I didn't want to do a boring one, with the pineapple rings on top and the fake maraschino cherries (blech...I hate those things). So I decided to do little individual ones. I found a pretty good recipe on epicurious.com, however it was a little boring for my taste. I wanted to make it a little more pinacolada-ish, so I decided to add some coconut, cardamom, vanilla extract and rum. It turned out really well, I think. I was impressed and hubby was even more so. In fact, he said it was the best he ever had...hahaha!!

So without further ado, here is my entry for "A Taste of Yellow".




Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cakes
(Makes 12)

Fruit Topping
1 can of pineapple rings
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted

Cupcake Batter
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup reserved pineapple juice
1 egg
1 tbs rum
2/3 tbs vanilla essence

1. Pre-heat oven to 350F and grease a 12 hole muffin pan.

2. Drain pineapple rings completely, reserving 1/2 cup of juice for the batter.

3. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and melted butter. Divide evenly between the muffin pan cup. Cut out a small piece of the pineapple ring so that it can form a smaller circle. Lay on top of sugar mixture and set aside.

4. In a large bowl (or mixer), combine flour, sugar, cardamom, coconut and baking powder. Mix in the pineapple juice and butter to make a smooth batter. Beat in the egg. Spoon batter over the pineapple in the muffin cups, filling each cup 3/4 full. Bake in the centre of the oven for 25-30min, or until cake tester inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean. Cool cupcakes in the pan for 5 minutes and then turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.