Oh what a month. Its been nonstop at work, I now work Monday through Friday from 11 to 8pm. So that means I get to get up early and bake...YAY! Ok so there was a bit of sarcasm there, but not too much because I do love to bake. For TWD I baked the gingerbread last week. I know Im behind but House, work and family first.

I also was going to take pictures of my husband and my coworkers eating the bread but I was too involved in conversation with them to remember to take pictures so all I have is the pic of when I poured it into the bundt pan. Heh.

I also forgot to do my first assignment for Daring Bakers. I know shame on me, but I swear its not my fault. I was really excited about making Tuiles. I had this whole idea about make a starry night theme with some blueberries and dark chocolate swirls on them. Fail I guess.

The Fresh ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread was amazing. I never eat any of my baking, but this smelled so amazing I had too just have a bite. One bite turned into 3 slices.

I took the bundt cake to work the next day and everyone tore into it like crazy. So I ill definitely be making that one again pretty soon.

Here is the only picture of the Gingerbread bundt cake I made.



Next time Ill definitely take pictures.

Omg, I love this recipe. Not as much as my Tiramisu cupcake, but its up there. This actually took me 3 hours to make, only because I was watching Leatherheads and oogling John Krasinski while baking. It was relatively easy to make and messy too!

I decided to look up the origin of German Chocolate Cake when I came across some interesting stuff. Apparently this cake is American and has no German association except for the fact that in 1852 a gentleman by the name Sam German made this dark baking chocolate bar for Baker's Chocolate Company. After a while they just dropped the apostrophe and the "S" and it became Baker's German Sweet Chocolate instead.

I baked this recipe for my hubbster Jesse. He looooves coconuts. Hopefully there are still cupcakes when I get home tonight. :) A coworker also asked me to bake this for them. Ill do that next week.

Ingredients for the cupcake:

So I know I'm suppose to post on Tuesdays for my TWD cooking posts, but yesterday I was sick and just felt blah! I really wanted to do this recipe though. I love baking cakes and I love turning them into yummy breads. Although I do love the way bundt pans look at the same time I also dont like them for the same reason.

I thought this would be better put to use in a bread pan. Eaten like bread and not cake. I waited for today to have a bite of it with some butter and caramel flavored coffee. The raisans were so yummy in this Kugelhopf. Oh man, I almost died of delight when I had that first bite.

Although it was really tasty I just have to say to Dorie, Why...Why must you pick the most craziest recipies that require an insane amount of prep time and not even WARN me about it! Jeez Louise! I wanted to kill myself making this cake. That and I had a husband asking me when it would be ready. Its like having a child in the back seat asking if you are already there yet. You just want to drop it of on the side of the road, but know that you would end up seeing some jailtime for it.

Also I've been sick for the past few days and have been traveling from west coast to east coast. It's been pretty non-stop for me the last 3 weeks or so. I went to Las Vegas for a dear friends wedding. It was completely beautiful. I got to see our friends cry and of course my husband made fun of the groom sniffling the entire time. I won 500 big ones at a Texas Hold'em table on my first try. Im sure it wont happen again, but it was fun as hell. I spent 4 days in Vegas and had so much fun this time around even though last time I went I got married. Too many things to do the last time I guess.

I then came back and was only home for 2 days when I had to drive 9 hours to Georgia to my little nephews birthday party. Conan, the dog that I had mentioned before, didnt get adopted by my coworker and my mom got him anyways. Now she has 2 mini-pinches. I was in Georgia for 2 days, hung out with family, went to a 65 mile yard sale and found a working Commodore 64 for a dollar, and finally when to a bon-fire. I loved the weather up there. I wish it would get cold here in Miami.

Im going to be making some cupcakes tomorrow and experimenting with fondant decorations as well. I know Ill be tired as hell seeing as I'll be at Best Buy tonight waiting in line like a reatrd for the release of Wrath of The Lich King. Bleh.

I am a huge fan of pineapples. Crushed, smashed, chunks, rings or puree pineapple. It doesn't matter to me at all. I practically drool at the thought of pineapple. Actually, I'm drooling right now. For my Friday recipe I decided to take my moms pineapple upside-down cake and turn it into a cupcake! Bam! Just like that. Only this time, instead of a cherry, I would use strawberries. Tart and scrumptious, it would add the perfect balance to her recipe.

She always did say never to follow the recipe completely but make it your own in a certain way. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm not done yet. Not only did I change out the cherry and add a strawberry but I also drizzled some maple cream onto it. Not much, so it would not overcome the pineapple flavor. We will see how it goes tomorrow at work when I take this batch to my subjects. Although my husband, Jesse, already approved!

My photography skills are horrible seeing as this was taken with my iPhone.


Pineapple Upside-down Batter:

1 cup of Butter (2 sticks) softened to the touch.
1 cup of Sugar.
2 cups of Self-rising flour
4 Eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla extract


Topping (or the bottom of the cupcake :P):

2 cups of Strawberries.
1-20 oz. can of Crushed Pineapples.
1/2 cup of Butter (1 stick) softened to the touch.
3/4 packed light brown sugar (or any kind of brown sugar, really up to you)

Maple Cream:

3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream.
5 tbsp of natural maple syrup. None of this Aunt Jamima stuff. I'm talking real maple syrup!

Making the cupcakes:

Make sure you pre-heat your oven to 350F degrees. While that's heating up, in a large bowl,
mix together the butter, vanilla, eggs, sugar and sift the flour into that bowl. Mix with an electric mixer for 1 minute on the lowest speed then 3 minutes on the highest speed. Once done with that go ahead and butter your muffin tray and dust it with flour if you want. I prefer lining them with the cupcake liners.

Spoon into the pan 1 tablespoon of melted butter, one tablespoon of crushed pineapples, and one tablespoon of brown sugar. Do this to each cupcake liner in the pan. Once done go ahead and spoon in the batter. I pretty much added the batter till it was flushed with the top of the cupcake liners. Heh. Bake for 20 minutes.

While that's baking, go ahead and mix the heavy whipping cream and the maple syrup together. Stir occasionally till it turns into a thicker consistency (around 5-8 minutes).

Serving:

When you are ready to serve these cupcakes just put them on a plate upside-down take off the liner and drizzle lightly 1 tbsp of maple cream and top with a few slices of a strawberry.

Let me know what you guys think of my version of my moms pineapple upside-down cake recipe.

Enjoy.