Mom's Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Fabulously Retro Cake

Recipe from Mom’s Best Desserts

Among my earliest childhood memories are the wonderful desserts that my long-gone mother made.  It’s hard to find some of these recipes nowadays. How lucky I was to find Mom’s Best Desserts, a treasure trove of retro recipes, at the library. After bookmarking 30 pages, I realized that I knew the second author, Fran Raboff. A fantastic baker and chef, Fran used to bring me homemade treats years ago when she studied sculpture in the community college art department where I worked. “This is for you, not the students,” she would say. Knowing her dessert expertise, I immediately bought the book. This cake tastes just like my mom’s.

Pineapple Rum Tortuga Cake

Moist & Rich Cake with Ground Almond Topping

Recipe Adapted from Various Sources

This year Pirates Kidnapped the Luau (party), so my usual Aloha-style Ginger Frosted Pineapple Cake—from Cooking By Moonlight—needed some Caribbean-ization. King Arthur’s Flour’s blog and Wuvie from Instructables helped me create a pineapple variation of a Tortuga Rum Cake. The most important detail of this recipe is that it must be made a day or two in advance to allow the rum glaze to mellow and permeate the cake. It’s best when left overnight in the pan before flipping onto the serving plate and enjoying. The flavor and texture are worth the wait!

Pan Grilled Tilapia or Salmon with Pineapple Salsa

Colorful and Healthful

Recipe adapted from Health.com

As we look towards the treat- and comfort food-laden holidays, it’s good calorie economics to eat more lightly in the meantime. And so I offer this recipe with light, inexpensive, and sustainably farmed tilapia. The original recipe, no longer available at Health.com, called for salmon, higher in calories but filled with healthful omega 3 oils. It’s the tail end of salmon season in the Bay Area, so I’ve included a salmon cooking variation at the end. With its higher oil content, salmon browns more readily, but tilapia browns up just as deliciously using a method I derived from my dad.  Atlantic or Pacific cod, lingcod (plentiful right now), and line-caught black rockfish are sustainable white fish that can be prepared like tilapia.

Pineapple Orange Stuffed Sweet Potatoes or Yams

Recipe Adapted from Old Photocopy

During the early days of spring, many of us await strawberries and other early-season produce none too patiently. In the meantime, I’m drawn to tropical fruits that are harvested year-round, like bananas and pineapples. ‘Course, they’re not exactly local, but are still “in season.” It’s a perfect time to use up the last of the wintry veggies, before we start harvesting their spring counterparts. Like the two gigantic yams (or sweet potatoes?) I've had since January. It’s also the perfect time to enjoy oranges; soon their season will be just a memory.

Ginger Frosted Pineapple Cake

Pecans: In the Pineapple Ginger Cake, or On the Side

Recipe adapted from Cooking By Moonlight

This pineapple cake is unique in several ways. First, there is absolutely no fat or oil in the cake itself (note: the frosting is another story). Second, it requires an entire can of crushed pineapple including the juice. This acidic juice interacts with the baking soda to make the cake rise. Lastly, I’ve already blogged several recipes from Cooking by Moonlight, my very favorite cookbook, so planned to just make this tropical-ish cake for a luau and not blog it. And then some lovely ladies at the luau wanted the recipe, and asked where to find it on Seasonal Eating. And so, by popular demand, here’s an easy cake that’s always a hit at parties.

Moscato Poached Pears with Pineapple

Bosc (lower) and D'Anjou Poached Pears with Pineapple

Recipe by Robin

I don’t know about you, but  every winter I start dreaming about the tropics. Imagining abandoning my shoes, socks, jeans, and jacket (but not my hat) to walk carefree on some secluded beach. Donning flip-flops—known as slippers in my favorite locales—and heading over to the local farmers’ market to check out what produce can be grown in red dirt with plenty of rain and sun. Flirting with strange fruits and their vendors, chatting with local craftspeople, and selecting the most luscious from a huge number of pineapples by their scent. Alas, a trip to Kauai isn’t in the budget at the moment, but a can of organic pineapple chunks can add a sun-kissed touch to winter pears here on the mainland, especially when combined with a sweet California wine.

Low Sugar Strawberry Pineapple Jam

Now and Later, to Keep and Share

Recipe by Robin

Strawberry season. Here on the central CA coast, we are blessed with a long one, often beginning in late April and sometimes extending into November. In fact, it was the prospect of a season-long supply of Live Earth Farm strawberries that inspired me to sign up for their weekly CSA produce boxes.

By this time of the season, eating fresh strawberries is no longer a novelty, yet they’re still at their peak of flavor and freshness. We’ve eaten them plain, dipped them, drunk them, shortcaked them, frozen them, and even saladed or balsamic-minted them. What’s next? That’s right, strawberry jam!

Sweet & Sour Herbed Carrots & Cabbage

Sweet & Sour Carrots & Cabbage

Recipe by Robin

We’ve heard that necessity is the mother of invention, and this is especially true for chefs who cook with seasonal ingredients. I invented this recipe one winter with leftover purple cabbage and carrots, and used it again for our veggies this week. I like the way the purple cabbage intensifies the color of orange carrots, but you could substitute red or yellow carrots or green cabbage. The purple cabbage makes this a prettier dish than green cabbage, though.