Frozen Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
20100821:
This is one of the first recipes I found when I started trying to cook. At the time, I didn't have a springform pan (nor did I know what one was). I also didn't know what heavy cream was, but that was easy enough to find.
The cream of tartar eluded me the first time I went to the store, but I discovered it was together with all the spices; I found it between coriander and cumin. Remark: cream of tartar is not tartaric acid.
When I first started, I also didn't have an electric mixer or blender! In particular, the mixer was the final piece of the puzzle to make this dessert. The blender, however, was already purchased in order for me to make sweet corn pudding.
I bought the springform pan a day before the blender (July 19 / July 20).
I followed the original Frozen Pineapple Upside-Down Cake recipe closely, minus proper amounts of whisking.
Problems:
Starting too late and therefore at some point changed over from using an electric mixer to a balloon whisk to avoid noise.
Even if I wanted to use the hand electric mixer, I didn't have a tall and narrow mixing bowl for mixing the mixture which had too much liquid. If I had realized this, I would have used less of the pineapple juice from the can. Well there were different factors. But in the end, I think the result was at least satisfactory. I won't know for sure until the cake is ready to share and taste. Unlike other things I've cooked, I can't taste it after it's done. Imagine, "Why is there a part of the cake missing?" Actually... I take that back, from a spare piece of angel food cake that had soaked up some pineapple batter, tasted pretty delicious. Though I could have been tired been in an anything-would-have-tasted-good situation.
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| Some of the mess |
1 20-ounce can pineapple rings in juice
Raspberries (washed)
3 egg yolks
2 egg whites
6 tablespoons packed light brown ugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 cup heavy cream
Angel food cake
Process:
Soooo many steps. Soooo much time. Lol, actually, I took an excess number of breaks which prolonged the time it took to finish.
Placed the angel food cake in the freezer.
Coated my 9-inch springform pan with Pam (Original).
Set it on a large plate.
Blot 5 pineapple rings dry with 2 paper towels.
Arranged them in a circle in the bottom of the pan.
Placed a raspberry in the center of each and several raspberries elsewhere around the bottom. (Lol, but when it came time to pour the batter, I poured the batter too quickly and a lot of the raspberries shifted. D'oh!)
Blended the remaining pineapple and juice in a blender. (I would consider using less juice next time, and pour in juice as necessary. Also chopping up the pineapple before adding it to the blender may make for a smoother blending experience)
Beat the egg yolks and brown sugar in a stainless-steel bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed. I think I got it to be thick and pale brown, but not fluffy as instructed. Then when I added the puree, the mixer was like, "I'm gonna splatter this everywhere, muahahaha." And I said, "WTF!" So I took out my balloon whisked and did the best I could. But what I could do didn't seem too great.
Brought 1 inch of water to a slow simmer in a large saucepan.
Put the bowl of pineapple mixture on the water and beat, again by hand. There was a lot of foam/air bubbles, and so I wasn't sure if I was getting the right consistency. For sure the mixture gained volume and got to a temperature of 160 degreees F, but I'm not sure if it became thick. In any case, when I removed it from the heat, I continued beating for a while, but inconsistently.
I poured the mixture into the blender pitcher, washed the bowl, and beat the egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar. I think I was able to get it to foamy.
I put the bowl on the simmering water and beat some more. I probably didn't get it to as stiff as it should have gotten, and if I remember correctly, the thermometer only gave a reading of 120 degrees F, but there wasn't much depth in the bowl and I'm not sure if there was, whether or not I would have gotten a higher temperature reading.
I certainly mixed it on the simmering water for longer than the approximate time frames. [UPDATE 20100823: My suspicions are slightly confirmed as follows. When taking temperature of the chicken I was cooking today, if I only stuck the thermometer in one piece of chicken from the side, then the temperature only went up to about 120 degree F. But if I stuck it into that same piece lengthwise then it went up to about 140 degrees F, and then with several pieces of chicken covering most of the length of the thermometer, it went up to about 160. I cooked the chicken for an extra minute. Checked lengthwise, 170.]
Eventually, when I did remove the mixture from the heat, I continued beating as fast as I could. Then I whisked this together with the pineapple mixture. (I had no idea what "until smooth" implied, and didn't bother to look it up)
Then I beat the heavy cream in the stainless steel bowl and it started to curdle, or something. So I sort of gave up, and added it to the pineapple and meringue mix. Beating by hand for a while, at which point i decided to pour all this into the blender pitcher and use that as a bowl for the electric hand mixer. I couldn't really reach down far, and not that I wanted to cause the blender blades would be down there, but I thought this was better than nothing.
I poured the batter over the pineapple slices in the pan.
Then I got the angel food cake from the freezer, and cut off the harder pieces and burnt pieces (though as I mentioned in the angel food cake post, the harder pieces were actually pretty tasty). I laid the big slices over the batter and then started cutting smaller pieces to fill in the spaces.
I let the cake soak up the batter a bit before covering the top with plastic wrap and putting everything into the freezer.
The recipe said to freeze for at least 8 hours. I put the cake into the freezer at about 1:44 AM. It's now 12:44 PM. The cake is ready!
[20100822]
[20100824]
I realized today that I used a skillet/frying pan instead of a saucepan. Oh well.
20100825:
Result:
The time has come to unveil the beast. I take it out of the freezer and leave it out for about ten or fifteen minutes. I run a blunt knife around the edges. I can see I might have left it out for too long... the puree has melted quite a bit. I invert the pan onto a plate. Then I open the side. Plop! I pry the bottom of the pan off the top of the cake.
Time to cut and hopefully enjoy. There's not so much cake, so it feels more like you're eating pineapple, which is good. The angel food cake has partially soaked up the pineapple puree, which in the end is good, since in hindsight, it would have been terrible if it soaked up too much, because at room temperature the puree would melt and make the cake too soggy.
Relevant Links:
My Drink Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Shot post
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