Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

Pineapple Upside Down Cake. On a recent nice summer evening my French conversation group met at our house for a Summer potluck.  This Summer has flown by, and we've hardly had a chance to host people on our patio. I tried to organize something with this group a couple of weeks ago, but had to cancel due to the weather. I rescheduled and had amazing luck with beautiful weather on the new day! I considered making eclairs, because with 12 people coming it would have been an opportunity to make a large-batch dessert and they would have enjoyed it. But ultimately, I realized I wasn't going to have time. So looking at old recipes I hadn't made in a while, I decided to try Pineapple Upside Down Cake . It's very good, summery, and an old-fashioned recipe you don't see often. I used Sally's Bake Blog  recipe . I'd used it before, and when I checked her blog it had been updated.  I went with the new version, using cake flour and egg whites only to make a less-dense ca...

 Last weekend we had a get-together with several of the ladies from my book club at a local vineyard.  We got so lucky with the weather delivering a beautiful summer evening!  There is usually a food truck at this vineyard, but as it happened not on this day.  We organized a light and casual potluck and I decided to bring a Strawberry Cornmeal Cake .   I love making this cake because it's so easy to make, looks very pretty and is so summery.  It's easy to bring to places, easy to portion. Best of all, it tastes delicious, and with half the sugar of a regular cake. Following the usual recipe, the cake needed 39-40 minutes to bake, so a bit longer than the 30-35 it calls for.  This is the first time I made it in our new oven, so that is perhaps why. I was able to cut it into 16 squares, each looking very nice with a strawberry in the middle. I sampled one piece and left one square each for R* and Bubby to enjoy. The 13 pieces left fit easily into my...