Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

When I was up in Vermont for Christmas, my mom and I talked quite a bit about baking.  She’s a great cook, but absolutely hates baking because she thinks there are too many ingredients, too many steps, too many dirty dishes, and she finds the results unreliable.  She recently made these mini cheesecakes from the blog and thought they were way too much work.  I would describe the cheesecakes as pretty simple, but requiring a bit of patience when making the little crusts.  It was a nice reminder that my perspective on the difficulty level for a baking recipe is a bit skewed considering how often I bake and how much I enjoy it.

This recipe is truly easy and since it is just a doctored cake mix is very reliable.  I actually really like yellow cake from a mix, and unlike chocolate cake, think it’s very often better than homemade.

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Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

I found the recipe for these adorable little cakes on the Coconut and Lime food blog.  I originally noticed this particular recipe because it featured pineapple and I love pineapple, but the reason I decided to make it is because the recipe uses a whole can of pineapple.

The appeal of a recipe that uses a whole can of pineapple may not be obvious, but as a frequent baker I end up with all sorts of containers of various leftover ingredients in my fridge: egg whites, egg yolk, pineapple juice, frosting, cream cheese glaze, dough scraps, chocolate glaze etc.  I put all of these things in little tupperware containers with the intention of using them somehow.  In reality they sit there for weeks (sometimes months) and I give up and throw them away.  The fact that this recipe utilized the whole can of pineapple really appealed to me because I wouldn’t have any leftover pineapple juice to throw away immediately (and feel guilty) or to save (and tie up one of my storage containers).

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