Saturday, November 14, 2009

Upside-Down Cupcakes



I'm doing a little research on upside-down cakes for my Valentine's Day programs. Also, I have a recipe from the Thanksgiving menus to post on that subject.

I found this site about this style of cake. I put a photo from there here, on the most popular upside down cake - the pineapple. I love the pan with spacers for the pineapple rings! Here is more info:

The first recorded recipe for Pineapple Upside Down Cake According to John Mariani's ( The Dictionary of American Food and Drink , Revised Edition, 1994), "The first mention in print of such a cake was in 1930, and was so listed in the 1936 Sears Roebuck catalog, but the cake is somewhat older." In Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads (1995), Sylvia Lovegren traces pineapple upside-down cake to a 1924 Seattle fund-raising cookbook...While rooting around in old women's magazines I found a Gold Medal Flour ad with a full-page, four-color picture of Pineapple Upside-Down Cake--a round cake with six slices of pineapple, candied red cherries, and a brown sugar glaze. The date: November 1925." --- American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century , Jean Anderson (p. 432)

No mention of Mince Upside-Down Cupcakes, from my Holiday Week-End Luncheon. Mincemeat shows up in all the vintage cookbooks as a nice holiday treat, but this one is a bit weirder than others I have seen - which is saying a lot!

2 cups prepared mincemeat

1/4 cup water

3/4 cup butter

1 small package yellow cake mix

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup light cream

3 tablespoons rum (Is that enough to make it worthwhile?)

Dash of nutmeg

Whipped cream

Heat mincemeat, water and 1/4 cup butter, stirring until blended; cool. Grease bottoms of twelve 3 1/4-inch cupcake pan cups; fill each about 1/4 full. Prepare cake mix as label directs. Spoon into cupcake cups; fill about 2/3 full. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until done. Cool slightly. Invert pan on cake rack; shake gently and lift pan. Finish cooling. Combine sugar, 1/2 cu butter and cream. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until butter is melted. Add rum and nutmeg; keep hot. Arrange cupcakes on serving dish, mincemeat side up. Spoon rum sauce over top; top with whipped cream. Serve at once. Yield 12 servings.

Gross. I really think you could use cherries or another fruit that bakes well - maybe apples with cinnamon. I like the cupcake idea, though.

I just finished Jennifer Chiaverini's Quilter's Holiday, a Thanksgiving story. I love her Elm Creek Quilts series, and I talk about them during my vintage holidays talks, especially about food traditions. It got me thinking I haven't done charity knitting or quilting in ages. I used to do a lot of this. So I looked up sites needing hats and blankets and I knitted a hat yesterday, even though Owen kept taking the yarn skein and running, yelling "Mine!"

http://www.dailyknitter.com/charity.html

2 comments:

Anne Ylvisaker said...

Okay. Cooking, baking, working, writing, keeping up a fantastic blog, parenting, reading, giving presentations, and oh- knit a hat yesterday - for charity? I bow before your throne of productivity!

Amy said...

Right now it's pretty insane, but it's so fun doing the talks. Notice I've added no words to NaNoWriMo in a week, though!
But thanks as always for your wonderful comments!