Description:
Something round and red for the new year.

While bloghopping one day, I found this recipe for a Pineapple Upside Down Cake in 80 Breakfasts , one of the handful of food blogs that I regularly visit. I've been wanting to try it for the longest time but haven't gotten around to doing it until now.

Ingredients:
For the topping:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
Pineapple slices
Maraschino cherries

For the cake:
2 eggs (separated)
2/3 cups sugar
1/4 cup butter
6 tablespoons juice from the pineapple
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sifted all purpose flour
1/3 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:
First, we make the topping. Melt the butter. Pour melted butter on the bottom of a 9 inch pan. Sprinkle with the brown sugar, make sure it’s even. Arrange pineapples slices and cherries in “an attractive pattern” atop the butter-sugar coating.

Then we make the cake. Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugar together. Gradually beat in the egg yolks. Add the juice from the pineapple and the vanilla and beat, in all at once. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together, and beat in all at once. Do not over mix. Beat egg whites until stiff. Fold egg whites into the batter. Pour the batter into your prepared pan and stick it in the oven. Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick “thrust into the center of the cake” comes out clean. Turn upside down onto a nice serving plate. Don’t remove the pan for a few minutes so all the sugar-y topping runs down over your cake (and does not stay stuck to your pan).

Description:
I wanted to make cupcakes but I was too lazy to go to the store to buy ingredients, so I had to make do with stuff I already have. I did some web-browsing for a recipe and saw one for Nutella Frosted Cupcakes.

Fortunately, we never run out of Nutella in the house. I tweaked the recipe (specifically, I changed the amount of butter) so now it's a slightly modified version of a recipe that I found here, which is a slightly modified version of a recipe originally published in Donna Hay magazine.

Approximately 40 minutes later (including prep time), I had a dozen cupcakes. I made a second batch and, for variety, I added 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, which gave it a more chocolate-y taste but took away from the visual contrast between the cupcake and the "frosting."

Anyway, to describe this recipe, it's easy, easy, easy.
And yum, yum, yum.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups (200 grams) sifted all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.

Cream together butter and sugar until light, 2 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Don't worry if the batter doesn't look smooth. Add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter is uniform and no flour remains.

Using an ice cream scoop, fill each muffin liner with batter, they should be 3/4 full. If you're not using a scoop, fill each muffin liner with approximately 2 tbsps of batter. Top each cake with 1 1/2 tsp Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the nutella.

Bake for 20 minutes.
Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 12.