Tip 32 » Recipe

A Pineapple Upside Down Cake Your Family Will Love!

Jeanne — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:52:40 +0000

My family loves my pine apple upside down cake. In fact it’s my dad’s favorite! So I baked one for his birthday not too long ago. It is extremely easy to make and I promise your family will love it.

To make the pine apple upside down cake you will need:

a box of your favorite yellow cake mix along with all the ingredients needed to make the batter, you can find those on the box
1 can of pine apple rings
4 oz of butter
2/3 cup of brown sugar (light or dark, depends on your preference). You might need more (or less) brown sugar- depending on the size of your pan
About a dozen+1 of maraschino cherries (if you use the same cake pan as I do)
a 13 inch in diameter cake board or serving plate

About the cake pan.
To make my apple upside down cake I use Wilton’s Viennese Swirl Pan. Unfortunately they no longer make this pan. I bought mine from my good friends at Chocolate Belles long time ago. I just saw there are two Viennese Swirl Pans available, I think they might have very limited stock of these pans. To make your cake you can use any round cake pan, or even your cast iron skillet. Make sure your pan is about 12 inches in diameter to be able to arrange your pine apple as shown in the pictures bellow.

Steps

Cut 6 pineapple rings in halves, reserve one ring for the center of your cake.
Make your yellow cake batter. Just follow the recipe on the box.
Meanwhile melt your butter. Spray the wall of your cake pan with a cooking spray, pour and spread the melted butter evenly in the bottom of your cake pan. Sprinkle evenly the bottom of your cake pan with brown sugar. Make sure that the entire bottom of the pan is covered with brown sugar, it will help to release the cake from the pan.
Arrange you pineapple pieces and cherries on the bottom of your cake pan by placing a whole ring in the center, and the halves around – see the picture bellow.
Pour your batter gently over the pineapples, making sure to cover all pineapples. Tap the cake pan gently to release any air bubbles.
Bake in the preheated oven to 325℉ for about 35 to 40 minutes. At 35 minutes insert a wooden toothpick in the middle, if it comes out clean your cake is done.
Let it cool for about 20 minutes before flipping it over on a round cake board or plate (about 13 inch in diameter).

You can split your cake in half (horizontally) to fill it with a freshly whipped cream. Otherwise cut into portions and serve with a generous spoonful of freshly whipped cream. Enjoy!

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My First And Only Recipe for RWOP

Jeanne — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:21:09 +0000

It all started when my sister Christine, suggested that I participate in a contest at Real Women of Philadelphia. Unaware what exactly this contest was about, I signed up, created my profile and made a video to submit it along with my recipe (see bellow). Right from the beginning I managed not to notice one “little” detail, the ongoing contest is not only about the prize of $25,000, it is also sort of a casting competition as well. It was there, right in front of my eyes in bold print- The Casting Competition!

I love the idea behind the contest, but as you can probably tell from the video bellow I was petrified to be in it. That’s before I knew it was a “casting call” contest. I can’t imagine how scared would I be now! So I decided that the bellow recipe will be my only submission to RWOP contest.

However the entire experience inspired me to do more videos and recipes for this website- so please, join my mailing list if you don’t want to miss any recipes. Due to the warm feedback I received on Facebook, I am very encouraged to more videos and share with you my recipes. Some of you I know, some of you know my husband and I thank you all very much. It turns out that some of you are great cooks as well. Every one of you deserves to be mentioned by name.

Christine, thank you for encouraging me.

Rexanne, thank you for being the first to notice my recipe on Facebook! I love your Cooking With Rexanne website – and greatly appreciate your recent mention of my recipe!

Sabrina, as a working mom, you have to juggle lots of things! Thank you for the “like” over at Facebook!

Thank you Chuck, I will be visiting your website to see what’s “cookin” in your part of the country.

Last by not least a huge thank you to Lynne, Diane, Doris (please stay cool down in FL), Mary Lou and Lonnie.

So without any further ado here is my….

Philadelphia Cheese And Chicken Quesadilla

If you ever end up with left over chicken (rotisserie, roasted or just about any chicken) this is a quick and easy recipe to make delicious appetizer or a snack.

Prep time: 15 minutes |Cook time: 30 minutes |Total time: 45 minutes |Servings: 12

8 ounce(s) of PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese
2 cup(s) of Shredded Chicken
1/2 cup(s) of Salsa
1/4 cup(s) of Crumbled Goat Cheese
2 cup(s) of Kraft Shredded Cheddar Or Mixed Cheese
3 tbsp. of Chopped Jalapeno Pepper
1/2 cup(s) of Cherry Tomatoes (Cut into quarters)
6 10 inch Flour Tortillas

Steps

In a large mixing bowl mix the chicken, PHILADELPHIA cream cheese, 1 cup of kraft shredded cheddar, salsa, goat cheese and about half of Jalapeno peppers.
Spray a 10 inch (or bigger) skillet with a cooking spray and cook your tortilla in the skillet until lightly golden brown on one side, for about 3 minutes on medium high heat. Set the tortilla aside.
Take another tortilla and spread evenly about 1/3 of the mix you made.
Spray your preheated skillet with cooking spray, place the filled tortilla inside the skillet.
Cover the filled tortilla in the skillet with the one you cooked earlier (brown side up) and cook it for about 3 minutes.
To finish it, sprinkle the top of your casadia with 1/3 of the shredded cheddar, some jalapenos (adjust to taste) and 1/3 of cherry tomatoes. Bake in the oven at 400 degrees for about 4-6 minutes.
Repeat steps 2 through 6 to make additional (two) quesadilla.

Autumn Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Jeanne — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:35:29 +0000

With the Holiday seasons around the corner, you may be already planing what kind of pies you will be baking this year. Bellow are just a few products that will help you to impress your family and friends. Even if you are not a baker, but know some one who is, some of the products bellow would make an amazing gift during this holiday season. I especially like the 9″ round red ceramic pie plate. It is pretty cheap, and if you want to you can give the pie with a plate as a gift. And of course every baker will appreciate a good recipe book. I also have a wonderful pumpkin pie recipe (scroll bellow) for you to try.

Autumn Pumpkin Pie Recipe
I got this recipe a long time ago from a friend of mine. You can make your own pie crust for this recipe or a store-bought crust will do just fine.

For this recipe you will need:

2 egg yolk slightly beaten
3 cups of Pumpkin (you can use canned pumpkin or fresh pumpkin)
1 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 1/2 tablespoons of cinnamon (you can put more or less depending how much you like the taste of cinnamon)
1/2 teaspoon of ginger
1/2 teaspoon of allspice
1/2 teaspoon of powdered cloves (optional, pie still taste great without it)
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup of evaporated milk

Mix ingredients in order given above. Pour it an unbaked pie shell. Bake at 400 °F for 45-50 minutes. You will know that your pie is done when the clean knife will comes out clean when inserted in the middle of the pie. Halfway through the baking time I use the aluminum foil to cover the edges of the pie to prevent them from burning. But a crust shield for pies seems like a very practical tool to have.

Your pie should look and taste just like the pie you see bellow which I made not so long ago:

Autunm Pumpkin Pie

If you decide to make the Autumn Pumpkin Pie using the recipe above I would love to see the photos of your pies. You can add photos when commenting bellow.

Try This Buffalo Chicken Wings Recipe – You Will Never Order Them Out Again!

Jeanne — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:43:46 +0000

If you love Buffalo Chicken Wings and the only place you eat them at is a restaurant, you will be better off not reading this article. Otherwise you run the risk to never eat them at a restaurant again! I have learned this recipe from a very good friend of mine – Nicola. I still can’t believe that I considered my own variation of this dish decent before Nicola taught me the real thing!

Most of the restaurants out there bake or fry the chicken wings until they done and the just coat them in a hot Buffalo hot sauce before serving. The trick is to bake chicken wings until they almost done, coat it with sauce and then finish baking them.

To start off you will need about 12 – 16 chicken wings. You might want to cut them in two through the joint. I leave the tip of the wing on, but if you don’t like the look you can cut the tips off:

Arrange the chicken wings on a baking sheet and generously season them with powedered garlic, powdered onion, pepper and paprika. You can also do the seasoning in a large bawl so you can toss the wings- wings get better coating of seasoning this way. It is important not to use any salt in this step as your Buffalo hot sauce will have sufficient amount of slat in it.

Bake the wings in a preheated (400° F) oven for about 35 minutes until the skin begins to turn golden brown and the mean begins to barely separate from the bone:

Place the chicken wings and large ball and coat them in Buffalo sauce:

Rearrange the coated wings on the baking sheet while replacing the foil. I am using aluminum foil for two reasons, it leaves less mess, but it also makes it easy to discard the fat.

Bake the wings for another 10-15 minutes in a 400 °F over. You have to keep an eye on them now because you will not wont to overcook them. Generally I judge by the strong aroma from the sauce, you hardly smell the sauce when it is cold.

Hot Souce

To make the sauce for the chicken wings you will need:

3/4 cup – Hot Sauce (Red Hot by Frank’s seems to work the best, but you can use Tabasco or any other brand)
1/2 cup – Ketchup
1/4 cup – Blue Cheese Dressing (You can also use Ranch dressing, but the blue cheese gives it that extra something if you know what I mean)
1/4 cup – Soy Sauce (Reason we do not use the salt to season chicken wings before baking them)
3 Table spoons of butter

Combine the above ingredients in a a sauce pan place it over the medium heat burner:

While heating, stir the sauce until all ingredients fully dissolved and incorporated. The sauce should acquire a color of the cream of tomatoes soup:

This recipe should make a sauce that has a rather serious kick to it. However if you like more spicy or little milder sauce you will have to adjust the ketchup to hot sauce ratio.