Upside Down Pineapple Muffins
Ingredients:
Upside Down Part:
4 tablespoons reduced fat margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar (see Mark's Notes)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 pineapple slices
Cake Part:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
6 tablespoons reduced fat margarine
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large egg whites
1/2 cup pineapple juice (reserved from can)
1/2 cup low-fat milk
Instructions:
Topping part:
1. Melt margarine over medium heat.
2. Add brown sugar and cinnamon
3. Stir until sugar has melted.
4. Remove from heat.
5. Grease muffin pan - especially the bottom really well.
6. Cut the pineapple slices into quarters
7. Place two pineapple quarters at the bottom of each muffin cup.
8. Pour a tablespoon of brown sugar mix over the pineapples in the muffin cups.
Cake batter:
9. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
10. In a large bowl, sift flour and baking soda.
11. Set the flour/baking soda mix aside.
12. In a medium bowl, beat margarine and sugar until light and fluffy - 30 seconds to 1 minute on low speed.
13. Stir vanilla into the margarine/sugar mix.
14. Add the egg whites to the margarine/sugar mix and beat well - 1 minute on medium speed.
15. In a small bowl, combine the pineapple juice and milk.
16. At this point, you will have the large bowl with the dry ingredients, then a medium bowl with the margarine/sugar mix, and a small bowl with the pineapple juice/milk mix.
17. Fold in 1/3 of the margarine/sugar mix into the dry ingredients.
18. Fold in 1/3 of the pineapple juice/milk mix into the dry ingredients bowl.
19. Repeat steps 17 and 18, folding in the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
20. Stir it all together until just combined.
21. Pour batter into muffin tin over topping mix.
22. Bake for 20 minutes or until muffins are done and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
23. Let cool for 10 minutes.
24. Using a icing knife, cut along the edges of each muffin to loosen all of them.
25. On a large flat pan, flip the muffin tin over onto this, and the muffins should come out.
26. The pineapples should be on top now.
27. Enjoy.
28. Remember that Jesus loves you!!
Here is the link to the original recipe:
Mark's Notes -
Abby was looking for a 4-H project. She wanted to come up with a unique idea for muffins. She likes Upside Down Pineapple Cake and she likes pineapples, and so we suggested Upside Down Pineapple Muffins. I did some research and I found the above recipe.
Normally, we do not bake with brown sugar; however, these were being submitted for a formal competition and so we used the brown sugar.
Abby made a practice batch Thursday night. The original instructions say that you only need 1 8 ounce can of pineapple slices. I believe that that is incorrect as there were not enough pineapple slices for all 12 muffin cups in the muffin pan. This is why in this ingredient list I stated that you need 6 pineapple slices.
So, Abby's first batch only made 8 muffins due to the lack of the pineapples. They were delicious. For the final batch that she made on Friday, we made sure she had enough pineapples.
The 4-H judges really liked it. They gave her a Blue Ribbon and an Honors Ribbon.
Unfortunately, Abby was eating like one of these every morning. Later in the day, she was complaining about a stomach ache. We learned from this experience that Abby has Trisha's intolerance to brown sugar.
Next time when I make these, I won't use brown sugar. For the topping that goes over the pineapples, I was going to try using honey. I will let everyone know how that turns out.
Also, this recipe uses margarine. Based on everything I've read, you really shouldn't bake with margarine and use real butter for baking. This turned out well enough. Maybe I will try it with butter as well next time.
While working on this recipe, we got into a discussion on what was the difference between a cupcake and a muffin. I did some quick Google searches and it appears that a cupcake uses a cake batter and a muffin uses some type of bread batter - either a quick bread batter or a yeast batter. The cupcakes should be light and fluffy like a cake and the muffins should be more dense. So, knowing that, honestly, this recipe reads more like a cake recipe than a muffin recipe. The title uses the word "Muffin"; however, in the original instructions, it refers to the batter as a "Cake" batter. Either way, it was delicious.
So, hope you enjoy reading my blog, trying these recipes, learning a few things as I am. Most importantly, enjoy this yummy treats, and remember that Jesus loves you - always.
