EZ Pineapple Cupcakes

I recently became intrigued at a poked pineapple cake recipe that I saw in a coupon ad. I found the online version, but only after I ran across a no-poke recipe that attracted me for its simplicity.

In the past, I've looked at pineapple upside-down cake recipes, and can't seem to muster the enthusiasm to make one. Holey moley! Both Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines have recipes that, to me, are mind-numbing for numbers of ingredients. As for maraschino cherries inside the pineapple rings, I'll save those ingredients for the ham that I picked up for Easter and still haven't baked yet. (Sell-by date has another 1 1/2 weeks.)

Back to the Dole recipe, I thought the number of ingredients and process looked way more complicated than what I wanted to try. Making a cake with pineapple in it interested me, along with making handy individual smaller sizes instead of using a bundt pan. It took a good while to find the "Pineapple Poke Bundt Cake" recipe on the web. Without Googling the exact title, I was unable to find the exact recipe. Even searching Dole's website didn't yield the recipe.

The upside in expending the effort to find the pineapple poke cake recipe was finding food.com's "Frosted Pineapple Cake". The cake part calls for only five ingredients—flour, sugar, eggs, crushed pineapple, and baking soda. As usual, when I see a recipe, I assess the ingredients and process. As the poke recipe included vanilla bean, I figured the scratch recipe might be ok with adding vanilla extract.

I further deviated from the scratch recipe as follows:

1. Measured the pineapple juice for curiosity's sake (3/4 cup, the same amount for the poke cake recipe).
2. Stirred the dry ingredients in a plastic measuring bowl.
3. Stirred the wet ingredients in a different measuring bowl. (Added 1 teaspoonful of vanilla. As the poke recipe calls for vanilla bean, good enough use vanilla extract in the scratch recipe.)
4. Stirred the wet ingredients into the plastic bowl.
5. Noted the batter measurement (5 cups).
6. Poured the batter into the 24 spray-oiled cupcake pan wells, baking at 350° for about 20 minutes instead of 9 x 13 pan for 40-45 minutes.
7. Skipped the frosting.

My pixstrip shows eight image areas:

1. Implements (Your preferences might vary.)
2. Ingredients
   • Dry, with plastic bowl
   • Wet, with glass bowl, and spray oil
3. Batter in plastic bowl
4. Batter in cupcake pans
5. Baked cupcakes on cooling rack
6. Baked cupcakes detached from pans and flipped onto cooling rack.
   Note: For extracting the cakes, I used a plastic knife to gently cut around the cakes and nudge at the bottoms.
7. Baked cupcakes in cake taker.

Ingredients

• Dry
• 2 C flour
• 2 C granulated sugar
• 2 tsp baking soda
• Wet
• 1 20-oz can crushed pineapple, all of it
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• spray oil (Next time, I might try also shaking some flour into pans after I spray oil and see if the cakes detach a little more easily.)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Pour the dry ingredients into the plastic bowl, using a wire whip. (I used a flat one.)
3. Mix the wet ingredients in the other bowl.
4. Pour the mixed wet ingredients into the plastic bowl and stir the ingredients until they're moistened.
5. Pour and evenly distribute the batter into the 24 spray-oiled cupcake wells. (I pushed my luck by pouring the batter to almost the top instead of the usual 2/3 to 3/4 full.)
6. Bake for about 18-20 minutes or until the cupcakes are lightly browned. (Use toothpick test for doneness if desired.)
7. Transfer the baked cupcakes onto cooling rack.

Post-Recipe Thoughts

The recipe makes more of a quick bread than typical cake mix cake. Thus, I used a wire whip to gently but thoroughly mix rather than use a hand mixer and beat the ingredients. The cupcakes' texture seemed denser than regular cupcakes—weighing about 2 ounces each, a little less airy than regular cake, only slightly chewier than a muffin, and not crumbly. The cakes were not crumbly. I put them into cupcake papers for neat handling.

The cupcakes are low fat and low sodium, but extremely high in carbs—lots of sugar, pineapple, and flour. Each is about 125 calories, way less than if you add frosting. Yummy taste and texture; seems like adding frosting would be loading even more sugar and also adding more work.

October 31, 2015 (update)
If you want to use a cake mix method for pineapple cupcakes, visit "Simply Simple Pineapple Cupcakes". An update to ingredients: In researching for that blog article, I saw a scratch-ingredients recipe where 1 1/2 cup of sugar is ok to use. Though 400 calorie savings per batch makes sounds impressive, it translates to only about saving 17 calories per cupcake.

Tubular Waffle Grid Wafers 2

Back in August, I published my recipe for Tubular Waffle Grid Wafers that I used test tubes for helping shape the cooked wafers. (I wanted to use my waffle cone appliance to make shapes besides waffle cones.) This time, I used a 3 x 8 grid text tube rack for holding the shapes. The rack is open air, better for air circulation and avoiding trapping steam than the set of test tubes I used previously. Also, the 24 vertical cavities means I can stand up a lot more tubular wafers.

My pixstrip shows the following images:

1. Equipment and utensils
2. Ingredients and mixing
   1. Eggs and salt, to be mixed together first
   2. Sugar, to be added to the eggs and salt mixture (Yes, I'm reusing this and the next pix of ingredients.)
   3. Rest of ingredients
3. Process completion
   1. Batter baking process (1st and 2nd image in the 2nd row)
   2. A rolled baked wafer
   3. Finished tube wafers in the test tube rack (My batch of 18 includes a few substandard ones for cautionary note.)

Equipment and utensils (spray oil being a bridge from equipment to baking process)

• Waffle cone maker
• Mixer (I used an electric hand mixer.)
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Rubber spatula(s)
• Plastic spatula
• Mixing bowl(s)
• Cooling rack
• Test tube rack, available online for less than $10

Ingredients and mixing (from the Simply Vanilla Wafer Cones recipe of the Bella Recipe Guide)

• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 C of water
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 C cake flour (can sub with 1 C flour -2 T flour +2 T cornstarch)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Recommended: Spray oil application about every other wafer or so.

1. Beat the eggs and salt.
2. Add the sugar and beat it. :-)
3. Add the water, oil, cake flour (or replacement flours), and vanilla.

Process completion (baking, etc.)
Prepare the iron as instructed with your appliance. Because I've used mine a few times, I've only wiped the cooking surfaces with a clean, warm, damp kitchen rag for cleaning preparation, sprayed the cooking surfaces, and plugged the cord. Heating time is a minute or so.

For each disk, pour about 2 T batter, close the lid, and heat for about 30 seconds. Move the cooked disk onto the cooling rack, roll it up, and slide it into a cavity. Continue the batter dispensing and baking process until you use up the batter. My calculations for calories, about 93 calories for each tube.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Mini-muffins

This snack is a hybrid of chocolate chip cookies and muffins—a long-time favorite cooky, but softer, and in a smaller, bite-size shape. The cooks.com recipe that I derived my recipe from does not provide the size of muffin pans to use or the expected yield. Fortunately, I have enough experience in baking to infer some unstated information.

• The amount of fluid and flour (+ oatmeal) looked to be enough to equal about one box of cake mix.
• The stated baking time of 22 minutes seemed appropriate for normal cupcake size.

Recipe deviations from the cooks.com recipe
I tend to deviate from recipes that I try out. For instance, I might substitute an ingredient that I have on hand. Deviations and disclosures follow.

• Granulated sugar instead of brown sugar
  (If you'd rather use brown sugar and find yours is brick-hard, you can use the info in my oatmeal cooky recipe for resoftening it.)
• Replacement of 1/8 of oil with sesame oil
  I had hoped to add a nutty flavor, but the nuttiness didn't seem apparent in the results.
• Regular-sized chocolate chips instead of mini-chips
• Mini-cupcake pans and paper liners, baking the batter for 17 minutes instead of 22
• Double-recipe batch, which yielded 72 mini-muffins.
  I made enough to tote to two events that coincidentally occurred on the same day—a workplace potluck lunch and an evening professional organization meeting.

My pixstrip shows five image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients (dry, wet, and chocolate chips)
3. Batter in pans
4. Baked mini-muffins on cooling rack
5. Baked mini-muffins in goodies tin

Implements

• large mixing bowl
• medium small mixing bowl
• mini-cupcake pans
• mini-cupcake paper liners
• pastry blender
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• additional spoon for ladling batter if desired
• rubber spatula(s)
• cooling rack for done mini-muffins

Ingredients

• Dry
• 2 2/3 C flour
• 2 C uncooked oats
• 2/3 C granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• Wet
• 2 C milk
• 1/2 C oil
• 2 eggs
• 12 oz chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Place mini-cupcake paper liners into each mini-cupcake cavity.
3. Pour the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, using the pastry blender to blend well.
4. In the smaller bowl, mix the wet ingredients.
5. Pour the mixed wet ingredients into the larger bowl and stir the ingredients until they're moistened.
6. Stir the chocolate chips into the batter.
7. Scoop about a rounded spoonful of batter into each paper-lined well, about 2/3 to 3/4 full. (I filled two batches of 36 wells. YMMV.)
8. Bake for about 17 minutes or until the mini-muffins are lightly browned. (Use toothpick test for doneness if desired.)
9. Transfer the baked mini-muffins onto cooling rack.

Tubular Waffle Grid Wafers

These tubes are soft rollups that you can spread frosting or other sweet filling in. The softness comes from rolling up baked waffle-cone wafers and dropping them into cylinders that are narrow enough for steam to stay in. For my recipe, I used color-coded 1-inch diameter test tubes. The recipe is actually from the waffle-cone machine manufacturer for making waffle cones. I wanted to try making tubes, as I don't keep ice cream in the house. If you want crispy tubes, roll each baked waffle around a dowel or chop stick and hold them together for a few seconds. (For my next experiment for making crispy tubes will be trying a fortune cookie batter recipe, a test tube rack, or both.)
My pixstrip show the following images:

1. Equipment and utensils
2. Ingredients and mixing
   
   1. Eggs and salt, to be mixed together first
   2. Sugar, to be added to the eggs and salt mixture
   3. Rest of ingredients
3. Process completion
   
   1. Batter baking process (1st and 2nd image in the 2nd row)
   2. A set of rolled baked wafers
   3. Finished tube wafers
   4. Some tubes and frosting (filling optional)

Equipment and utensils (spray oil being a bridge from equipment to baking process)

• Waffle cone maker
• Mixer (I used an electric hand mixer.)
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Rubber spatula(s)
• Plastic spatula
• Mixing bowl(s)
• Cooling rack
• Cylinders (I used test tubes—aka "test tube shooters"—that I bought at Urban Outfitters, which are also available online.)

Ingredients and mixing (from the Simply Vanilla Wafer Cones recipe of the Bella Recipe Guide)

• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 C of water
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 C cake flour (can sub with 1 C flour -2 T flour +2 T cornstarch)
  

  Note: I'm 'fessing up to having putting only 2/3 the amount of flours because I, duh, misread my list of ingredients

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Recommended: Spray oil application about every other wafer or so.

1. Beat the eggs and salt.
2. Add the sugar and beat it. :-)
3. Add the water, oil, cake flour (or replacement flours), and vanilla.

Process completion (baking, etc.)
Prepare the iron as instructed with your appliance. Because I've used mine a few times, I've only wiped the cooking surfaces with a clean, warm, damp kitchen rag for cleaning preparation, sprayed the cooking surfaces, and plugged the cord. Heating time is a minute or so.
For each disk, pour about 1 T batter, close the lid, and heat for about 30 seconds.

Note: If you want to make cones or bigger tubes, which won't easily fit into test tubes, pour 2 T. With 1 T batter, the lid locks fine. More than 1 T at a time, the lid tends to not stay locked. In my past recipe for waffle-grid tortillas, I held down the lid, using an oven pad for each hand. (Warning: The lid gets hot.)

Move the cooked disk onto the cooling rack, roll it up, and drop it into a cylinder. Continue the batter dispensing and baking process until you use up the batter. (My pixstrip shows a set of six filled, poured out tubes, and tubular wafers.)

I wound up with 22 tubes and some 2-T batter disks. Those disks didn't last long enough to make it into the picture. :-) My calculations for calories, considering my reduced amount of flours, came to about 50 calories for each tube. Placing about a teaspoon of frosting nudges the calories by another 25. IOW, the plate of four as shown in the pixstrip amounts to about a 300-calorie snack, about the amount in a good-sized candy bar. Eater beware!

Macaroons (egg whites replacement)

Last month, I offered up cake mix macaroon cookies, and I mentioned gluey coconut clumps in context of macaroons. I still think macaroons are gluey and clumpy, but my results taste better than macaroons I remember from way back. This recipe includes information for substituting egg whites with Wilton meringue powder. It also includes my best guess for coconut calories, espite the coconut package squishiness for numbers of servings and calories.

In researching macaroon recipes, I noticed many used egg whites. I myself prefer to avoid recipes that call for only egg whites or only egg yolks—arggghhhh, leftover egg yolks or leftover egg whites! I recalled I have a container of Wilton meringue powder, which I used for making meringue cookies once. (They came out light and airy, but were not a big hit in the household.)

Macaroons should be a good way to try using up some of the powder, I thought. The container showed substitution information of 2 teaspoons of powder and 2 tablespoons of water for one egg white. Interestingly, I could not find macaroon recipes that showed substitution. I encountered macaroon recipes that specified beating egg whites lightly to beating them to stiff peaks. I decided to beat the egg white substitute to a froth.

I looked up macaroon recipes mostly for fewest ingredients, which is my main standard for simplicity. The Scribbler macaroon recipe is intriguing for both simplicity and complication. The blog owner was gracious and prompt in responding to some questions I posted.

The simplicity was in the basic ingredients. The complications lay in the decorative areas, nicely detailed for those who like to add flair to their macaroons. The Scribbler recipe shows several appealing pictures and lists steps to achieve the visual effects.
My pixstrip shows five image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients, dry and wet
3. Mixed ingredients in one bowl
4. Dough spoonfuls on a parchment-lined pan
5. Baked macaroons

Implements

• cooky pan(s)
• pastry blender
• mixer
• medium-large mixing bowl
• small mixing bowl
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• rubber spatulas
• parchment paper
• cooling rack for done cookies

Ingredients

• 3 C flaked coconut (~10.5 oz, 3/4 of 14-oz. package)
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1/3 C flour
• 2 T and 2 t Wilton meringue powder and 1/2 C water
  (You can use 4 egg whites.)
• 1 t vanilla extract, optional (I forgot to add it!)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Line the baking pan with parchment paper.
3. Pour the coconut into a medium-large mixing bowl, breaking up the lumps.
4. Add the flour and sugar into the coconut, using the pastry blender to blend well.
5. In the smaller bowl, mix the water and meringue powder together. (I mixed on low speed for one minute, then medium speed for one minute.)
   Note: For using only egg whites, lightly beat them.
6. Add the extract, if you want extract, (Or fuggedaboutit it like I did.)
7. Pour the beaten egg whites or egg-white substitute ingredients into the larger bowl.
8. Use the pastry blender to stir the ingredients together.
9. Use a tablespoon to scoop the dough.
10. Drop the spoon's dough onto the parchment-lined cooky sheet.
11. Bake for about 15-17 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
12. Transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

Calories and coconut servings
The recipe yielded 34 macaroons, calculated to about 66 calories each, 40 that come from coconut—almost 2/3 of each macaroon's calories. YMMV. The coconut was the most problematic ingredient for calculating calories. The package of coconut contains 14 ounces (396 grams).

The nutritional table shows 70 calories for every 2 tablespoons (15 grams) and claims 27 servings for the package. If dividing 396 grams by 15 grams, however, the total servings is 26.4. The front of the package prominently claims to contain 5 1/3 cups. If calculating VOLUME servings at 8 servings per cup (16 tablespoons per cup), the number of servings should be 8 x 5.33, or (gasp!) slightly fewer than *43* servings.

November 14, 2013: I made a double batch to take to a workplace potluck. Instead of using a pastry blender, I wore latex gloves to blend the dry ingredients, then later used a couple of large cooking spoons to stir the egg-white replacement fluid into the dry ingredients. My yield was 84 cookies, about 52 calories each.

Waffle-grid Tortillas

Just after Christmas while browsing for post-holiday sales in a department store, I spotted a clerk placing a sale sign for an appliance that I'd been lightly considering buying for the last couple of years. I'd seen waffle cone makers selling for $20, which I just wasn't willing to commit for. Woohoo! The sign said $7.99! What a deal! It took me a couple of months to try a recipe. A bit time consuming, and calorie-loaded because of a lot of sugar called for.

About a month later, I talked to an associate about waffle cones, how I was amazed that the baked disks were moldable for about only 10 seconds. He speculated that sugar in the batter crystallizes during the baking and hardens them when they cool. I decided to try making sugarless waffle cones. Well, I confirmed that the baked results did not retain a molded shape after cooling, whether cone or tube. So, this recipe is making waffle-grid tortillas, which are good for folding over or rolling up after microwaving fillings in them. (I've tried cheese and spinach, and cheese only.)

My tortilla recipe has significantly fewer calories than either the Simply Vanilla Wafer Cones or Orange Cinnamon Waffle Cones recipe at the Bella Waffle Cone Maker pdf manual, which I used for my basis. My tortilla batch makes about 11 5-inch disks. Interestingly, both waffle cone recipes claim 6-9 sweet cones for 2-3 T batter per waffle shape, although the volume of flour differs by about a third: 2/3 C flour all-purpose vs. 1 C cake flour.

My pixstrip's boundaries delineate the following sections:

1. Equipment and utensils
2. Ingredients
   1. Eggs and mixing
   2. Flour (replacement for cake flour)
   3. Oil and water, and mixing them into the flour and eggs
3. Batter baking process
4. Baked tortilla, microwaving with cheese (foldover, rollup)

Equipment and utensils

• Waffle cone maker
• Mixer (I used an electric hand mixer.)
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Rubber spatula(s)
• Plastic spatula
• Mixing bowls
• Cooling rack
• Cone shaper (for reference only, in case you decide to make sweet waffle cones)

Ingredients

I created the following table that shows ingredients and amounts for two model waffle cone recipes, and the would-have-been unsweetened cone recipe.

Note: Recipe #1 sweet refers to Orange Cinnamon Waffle Cones. Recipe #2 sweetrefers to Simply Vanilla Wafer Cones.

Ingredient	#1 sweet	#2 sweet	Tortilla
1 whole egg + 1 egg white	✔	—	—
2 eggs	—	✔	✔
1/4 t salt	✔	✔	✔
1/2 C granulated sugar	✔	—	—
2/3 C granulated sugar	—	✔	—
1 t ground cinnamon	✔	✔	—
2/3 C sifted all-purpose flour	✔	—	—
1 C cake flour (can sub with 1 C flour -2 T flour +2 T cornstarch)	—	✔	—
2/3 C cake flour (subbed with 2/3 C all-purpose flour -4/3 t flour +4/3 t cornstarch)	—	—	✔
2 T butter, melted and cooled slightly	✔	—	—
2 T vegetable oil	—	✔	✔
1 t orange extract	✔	—	—
1 t vanilla extract	—	✔	—
1/3 C water (Add more if needed.)	✔	✔	✔

Recommended: Spray oil application about every other tortilla or so.

 Eggs and mixing

Beat the eggs. If you want to make cone waffles, this is the stage where you mix in sugar after beating the eggs, then also add extract(s).

 Flour (replacement for cake flour)

Choose the flour type and amount. I used the 2/3 C cake flour replacement.

 Oil and water, and mixing them into the flour and eggs

Blend the flour, cake flour, or cake flour substitutions into the beaten eggs.

Batter baking process

Prepare the iron as instructed with your appliance. Because I've used mine a few times, I've only wiped the cooking surfaces with a clean, warm, damp kitchen rag for cleaning preparation, sprayed the cooking surfaces, and plugged the cord. Heating time is a minute or so.

For each disk, pour about 2 T batter, close the lid, and heat for about 60 seconds.

Note: The lid tended to not stay locked, so I held down the lid, using an oven pad for each hand. (Warning: The lid gets hot.)

Move the cooked disk onto the cooling rack. Continue the batter dispensing and baking process until you use up the batter.

Baked tortilla, microwaving with cheese (foldover, rollup)

If desired, as depicted on pixstrip, place filling on disk, microwave (about a minute, depending on filling, microwave power, and your preference), and fold over or roll up. Repeat for as many tacos or wraps as you want.

In case you want to use store-bought tortillas for fast preparation, try my convenient spinach-cheese taco recipe.

MnM--Munch n Music, Sweetyummies

YouTube playlists for this article (1, 2, 3),
playlist compilation article

Sweet tooth? You've come to the right place for video links of music and sweet stuff. Last month, I wrote about munchies and music. OK, so some of the links pertained to main courses. During my lookups at that time, I ran across more than I wanted to put into one article. This time, I'm listing sweet edibles, in time for Independence Day. Also adding more edibles here rather than in last month's article.

Fruity and tutti frutti

• Apple Blossom Time
• Orange Blossom Special
• Lemon Tree
• Who's in the Strawberry Patch with Sally
• I Heard it Through the Grapevine
• Watermelon Man
• Pineapple Princess
• Yes We Have No Bananas
• Cherry Hill Park
• Cherry Cherry
• Cherry Pie

I must say, the only thing I think sounds sweet about tutti frutti is the phonetic fruity term. It gives me an excuse to paste a link to Little Richard's Tutti Frutti.

Non-fruity sweet stuff

• If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake
• MacArthur Park
• Jurassic Park
• Candy (Manhattan Transfer in formal wear)
• Candyman, Christina Aguilera
• Candy Man, Sammy Davis Jr.
• Candy Man, Roy Orbison
• Lollipop (Dig those over-the-elbow gloves that the Chordettes wore.)
• Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows
• Lollipops and Roses
• My Boy Lollipop
• Sugartime (Perry Como mixing it up with the McGuire Sisters)
• Sugar Sugar
• Honey Honey
• Taste of Honey
• Honey Don't
• Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Huneybunch)
• The Way You Do the Things You Do (quick reference to honey)
• Lollipop (Candyman)

Leftovers

Visit the first part of the Munch n Music series for other main and side dishes.

• Granny Goose Potato Chips (What's in the Bag, Goose?)—not a song, but food-themed oldie commercial
• Mashed Potatoes
• Soup and Sandwich (one of several classic TV commercials on the website)
• Love and Marriage, with clip of Cary Grant & Ingrid Bergman. Recorded most famously by Frank Sinatra. This song was also the theme song for Married With Children TV series.
• Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch (added 7/10/2011)
• Lunch Will Keep Us Together (added 7/10/2011)
• Teach the World to Sing, version 1 and version 2
• Lime in the Coconut

The next Munch n Music article features links to sin ingestibles.