Mom's Cake Revisited -- and Remembered

For some reason, I started thinking about trying to make a pineapple upside down cake from Mom's old recipe. I don't know what prompted that notion, but I've toyed with it for a couple months. So the next time I went to Wal-Mart, I started picking up the ingredients I'd need to make it.

I say "started picking up" the ingredients, because it took a couple trips -- the more I examined the recipe, the more I realized I was missing something else. Of course, I knew I needed some pineapple, so I got that. I had pretty much all the other ingredients. Well, except for the pecans. And I was fresh out of eggs, having used up my last egg back a couple months ago. Oh, and the recipe called for flour. Who knew?

On my next trip to Wal-Mart, I picked up the baking powder (did you know that's different from baking soda?). I also re-read the recipe and realized I'd forgotten the brown sugar. Got that. And the butter. It called for 1/4 cup of butter. Ever try to buy 1/4 cup of butter? Stores must think I'm opening a bakery -- the smallest package of butter was a 1-pound (2-cup) box. There were four sticks of butter inside the 2-cup, 1-pound box. So if I need 1/4 cup, then I'd need.... let's see, 4 sticks times 2 cups is 8, divided by 1/4, times 1 box, carry the three .... hell, I have no idea how much to use.

Then I made another a quick trip back to Wally's to get vanilla. Gosh, you'd think I'd have HAD vanilla.

So I finally get all the pieces together and roll up my sleeves. I knew I was in deep when the first step was to separate 4 eggs. I put one here, one over there, the third in the living room, and put the fourth outside. In step 2, I realized I'd misunderstood step 1.

I continued wading through the "simple" recipe -- at least it looked simple -- for the next hour. I finally got ready to combine everything into the "cooking instrument." Mom always used a 10" iron skillet. I don't have one of those, and don't care to get one. So I found two smaller (9") Pyrex baking pans and decided to use them instead. You know, I was pretty good at math when I was younger, but combine math and cooking and I'm a moron. Obviously two 9" rectangular pans don't quite equal one 10" round pan. The results proved it, by the way.

So before I assembled all the parts into the two cake pans, I cleaned out and turned on the oven, and put my little oven thermometer inside on the top rack. Once I finished putting it all together, I was ready to shove them into the oven. But it was still cold inside. COLD. Hmmm. Who'd have ever guessed there are TWO knobs you have to set to make the damn oven come on? So I waited while it warmed up, then put the cakes in for a half-hour dry sauna.

The end result? The cakes came out substantially thinner than Mom's -- having spread out the single recipe over two large pans instead of one smaller....duh. But aside from that, they're GREAT. Yum.

(And in case you were very observant, have a great memory, and you're still wondering, the next time I try the pineapple upside down cake recipe I'll also try to remember to buy cherries for the top. Or is it the bottom. Crap. They'll go in there somewhere, assuming I actually remember them.)

So what to do with the rest of all those darn supplies I bought just for this cake? The thought occurred to me that I could pull out Mom's recipe for sugar cookies. That'd use up the other two eggs (I only bought 6), some of the sugar, and most of the flour. Of course, that meant another trip to Wally's to get a bottle of lemon extract. (And I splurged and got some macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips to add to the mix!)

I started the Big Cookie Project while the cakes were still baking. I didn't them right away, but mixed them together and shoved them into the refrigerator -- chilling, per instructions. They may turn out okay, but I don't know. I didn't have any cream, so I substituted prayer. And my recipe called for "soda" -- okay, I'm smart enough to know not to add Coke. But I wasn't sure if it meant baking soda, bicarbonated soda, or what. So I found a box of Arm & Hammer refrigerator baking soda and used some of that. I hope that won't kill me. I also tossed in a bit of baking powder, too; just to be safe -- what could it hurt? (Besides, I've got enough baking powder to last me 12 lifetimes, so may as well use some!)

I'll try baking the cookies later. Hopefully they'll be edible -- and won't explode.

"Costs" for my Great Cake Cooking Day?

• Supplies - $$$ I have no idea, really. Since I had NONE of the ingredients to start with (except for salt), I had to buy everything
• Four trips to Wal-Mart, 18 miles round-trip each time
• 1 hour finding bowls, pans, utensils, and other hardware needed
• 15 minutes finding the oven; and another 10 figuring out how to turn the damn thing on
• 2 hours mixing, folding, creaming, beating, and blending ingredients, PLUS all the time I needed to look up what those terms meant
• 30 minutes baking
• 1 hour cleaning up the mess in the kitchen and doing dishes
• 30 minutes doing laundry (all the towels and clothes I covered with flying debris and pineapple juice)

But the taste of Mom's pineapple upside down cake again? Priceless.

-- by Chef Larry

****** CONTINUATION *****

"The Big Cookie Finish"

So I learned a couple new things.

First, when a recipe says to put your semi-finished cookie-dough product in the refrigerator to "chill," it probably means a relatively short time -- at least when compared to the age of the universe. Probably something like an hour or three. Not three or four days.

Second, when you put a mixture of butter, sugar and flour in the oven, they become cookies. But when you put a mixture of butter, sugar and flour in the refrigerator for several days, they become concrete.

After several days of chilling my dough, I fired up the oven to bake my lovely cookie concoction. But when I pulled the mix out of the fridge (where it's definitely had time to "chill"), it was more the consistency of a boat anchor. I tried everything but using it as a bowling ball, and it wouldn't mix, crumble, break apart, fold, blend, or staple. It was simply solid. But since the oven was already warming up, I had no alternative but to take drastic measures. I popped the 5-pound ball of calories into the microwave for 60 seconds. To my surprise, instead of coming out as one gigantic cookie, it actually softened up so I could work with it again.

A few minutes later, I had batches of cookies going into and coming out of the oven.

Okay, so I learned a couple more new things.

First, I can't bake.

Second, even burnt cookies can taste mighty good!

....