"Flirty Pineapple" Birthday Cake
My birthday was coming around again, yikes! While flipping through my recipe binder, I spotted a recipe for a buttercream I wanted to try: Pineapple Buttercream. That gave me the idea to make a Pineapple Cake. It would be something different, and it would give me a chance to decorate the cake like a pineapple, something I'd been wanting to try.
Since I wanted to make a 6-inch cake, I looked for a recipe for pineapple cupcakes. I found this one in a website I'd never tried before, called "Baked by an Introvert". Usually, a recipe for 12 cupcakes will yield two thick 6-inch cake layers that make for a cake tall enough to decorate.
The recipeI was wary when I saw that the recipe called for using crushed pineapple and its juice. I was worried this would yield a dense cake, but I followed the recipe as is.
After 32 minutes the two cake layers were done. I was surprised to see how thin they were! It seemed like they barely rose in the oven at all. It's true that my baking powder is old, but I'd just used it in other bakes without a problem. So I think the problem is the recipe.
I knew immediately I'd need a third layer in order to have a cake I could decorate. As it happened I was also busy that day making banana breads to freeze. So I filled a 6-inch pan with banana bread batter. I knew this would solve the height problem. However, I wasn't pleased that I had to resort to this, because now the entire cake would contain as much flour, sugar and other ingredients as a Bundt cake, and each slice would be even more unhealthy.
Sure enough, the banana bread layer rose very tall. The problem of the cake being tall enough was now solved.
I needed to make pineapple leaves for the top of the cake. I started out melting green candy melts for either brushtroke feathers or piped leaves. But I soon realized what a hassle that would be. I let the candy melts cool, put them back in a bag for another project, and got out the fondant.
Candy melts cooling off before going back in the bag.I colored some Wilton fondant with Americolors' Leaf Green and Lemon Yellow colors and kneaded it until I got a shade I liked. Then I rolled it out and freehand cut leaf shapes. I placed a toothpick on the back of each leaf and secured it with a fondant "patch". I then set them out to dry on a cookie sheet.
Fondant leaves dryingThe next day, I was sure the leaves would be firm enough to stand upright, since they'd been drying for 24 hours in the air conditioning and I'd used tylose powder in the fondant. But no, they were not! I guess Wilton fondant calls for a much more CMC (tylose) powder than you would imagine.
I ended up not following the pineapple buttercream recipe that had originally inspired the cake. I didn't want to make a special trip to the store and spend money on dehydrated pineapple. Instead, I spooned out as much pineapple liquid as I could from the remaining crushed pineapple, put it through a sieve, and cooked a pineapple reduction. I let that cool and added it to the buttercream. I added it little by little, making sure it didn't cause the buttercream to be too runny. To this end I also omitted the vanilla. I tasted the buttercream and it was very good!
I frosted the cake the day before serving it. Using a Wilton 1/2 inch tip, I created a "feathered" design in a vertical pattern. by piping rows of thick dots, then smushing them upwards using the tip of the small offset spatula. The offset spatula is one of my very favorite tools, if not the favorite! Only small detail I would change is that I usually don't crumb coat cakes with colored buttercream to minimize the amount of food coloring we eat. But here the white crumb coat did show. It wasn't anything glaring, because the outer layer of frosting was a light yellow, but it still did bother me a tiny bit.
The hardest part of this design was making the eyelashes of the pineapple girl. I tried several ways and ended up cutting the shape with a circle cutter and not cutting away any of the "lash" part of the fondant, as I did for my first few samples, but just cutting the "lashes" and spacing them away from each other. Here I ran into a problem because after watching how long the leaves took to dry, I'd put a lot of tylose into the black fondant. It quickly became too brittle and pieces were breaking off. It was good that this cake was just for us, or I would have had to start over!
As far as the taste goes, we could immediately tell the center layer was banana bread and not banana cake. For me, I like banana bread so that is OK, but I think it did bother some. The pineapple layers were dense, almost custardy, and not that flavorful. You could feel some of the pineapple chunks, but they were devoid of taste. The buttercream was so good it balanced things out, but still, I would not use this recipe again. If making a pineapple cake in the future, I think I'd experiment with grinding dehydrated pineapple into a powder and combining that with a pineapple reduction in lieu of vanilla.
It was a beautiful day for a birthday lunch in our sunroom. On the menu was cold codfish salad, endive salad with walnuts, steamed potatoes and a non-alcoholic beer for me. We waited a couple of hours before enjoying the cake. I'm not sure why but it felt right to forego singing or candles on this birthday.
Overall I was happy I got to make this cake, it was just for our little family and all is good. I am grateful to be alive, healthy and all together for another birthday!
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