Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

promised my Twitter friends last week that I would put this recipe on our blog, so here it is, fresh from the oven; smelling so good, cooling on its’ serving platter. This recipe has so much going for it; easy to make; looks like a million bucks, sweetly old-fashioned, with the most amazing sauce; it tastes even better than it looks. Simple to do ….

…rrange pineapple rings, dark brown sugar and walnut halves in a 9" straight-sided pan…

…hisk up the batter with pineapple juice, eggs, sugar, and vanilla….

… ift your dry ingredients…I want my cakes light, so I sift . . .

sift with waxed paper, which is the way my mom taught me, and probably her mom taught her. But I bet people do it all different ways … This is me sifting flour : How do you do it?

ix the dry ingredients with the egg batter; pour it over the fruit, and pop it in the oven.

t comes out looking like this. Immediately turn it onto your serving platter and let it cool. (Hide it, protect it, there is huge temptation to pick out the walnuts or pull the sticky brown sugar from the sides.)

eanwhile you make the sauce with cream and sugar, and an inch-long piece of vanilla bean (slit it open, scrape the seeds into the cream, and throw away the rest) — chill the sauce well in a small pitcher.

nd here it is, with its pitcher of sauce, all ready to go where it went, which was to a Memorial Day Pot Luck with all our best friends. Serve the cake warm or at room temperature; each slice in a puddle of cold sauce.

ow, here’s the RECIPE! (It’s on page 112 of my Summer Book, or just click and you can print it out.)

Container Gardening Ideas

Front Porch Container Garden

y kitchen porch is the secret gateway to our house…down the driveway our friends (and the UPS man) must go;

. . . past the picket-fence garden . . .

. . . dipping under the wisteria arbor. No one uses the "real" front door of this house … if they do, no one hears them, no one comes. They have to search out the kitchen entrance to find us. Its kind of like the welcome mat to the house, so I want it to feel, you know, welcoming — with chimes and romantic flowers, such as . . .

hen we set up my new favorite thing, this small water fountain into which we dropped a couple of seashells, in honor of the fact that we live on an island!

o over the Memorial Day Weekend, I did what I do every year, filled my wheelbarrow with good compost we make from our kitchen scraps, pulled the pots out of the barn, got my gloves on and into the dirt.

watered everything well, until the old bricks and pots began to take on a bit of the grotto feel, with the gurgling water, the spring breezes, the butterflies and bees zipping by.

sit on the steps, wipe my sweaty brow, and drink a glass of wine as the sun goes down, listen to my fountain, watch the birds throw water around in the birdbath, aware of the neighborhood noises of dinners cooking and children playing, and think happy thoughts. Zee porch? She is done.

ow for my tiny garden tip of the day, because it is the little things in life that are the best … when you bring in roses to put in a bouquet, include mint. It really pops the fragrance of the rose … you go to smell the rose, and get the mint too.

That’s it…and remember June Moon Tune Spoon.
That says it all.

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