Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes

Or as I like to call them, pineapple CUPside-down CAKES.

Well, I thought it was clever.

So last Wednesday, my husband came home and announced that we needed to make a cake. My first thought was, "Score! I know what I'm blogging about next week!" My second thought was, "Why?"

Turns out the woman who makes wonderful cakes for everyone else's birthdays had her birthday—on the previous Sunday. After enjoying many of her dark chocolate/strawberry/whip cream leftovers, I knew this cake needed to be special. I'd just seen something about a jellybean cupcake decorating contest. While I don't think this will win any prizes there, I was inspired to use cherry jellybeans instead of maraschino cherries in this:

To make the pineapple upside-down cupcakes, I started with a yellow cake mix. The box called for a cup of water; I replaced half of that with pineapple juice (but the flavor was very subtle in the end, perhaps not even worth it).

Then I consulted a recipe for PU-DC. It called for a brown sugar sauce made with melted butter and brown sugar. Add just a little water and it turns into this:

I opened a poured in a drained can of pineapple tidbits (but I don't recommend this: it did something weird to the butter and looked super nasty. Instead, just pour the brown sugar sauce over the pineapple once they're in the cupcake liners).

I was worried about the brown sugar syrup leaking through paper cupcake liners, so I used foil+paper liners.

Fill the lined cups with the jellybeans first (cut in half), then the pineapple and brown sugar sauce (use a spoon to strategically place the jellybeans and fruit), then a scant scoop of batter:

I tried to make sure the batter touched the sides of the cupcake liner (but with the fluting, I couldn't really get a "seal" to the sides).

Bake as per package instructions:

Very carefully peel the paper off (the jellybeans may stick to the liner, so you might have to rescue them).

The dye from the cherry jellybeans did run a bit, and the effect wasn't so great. Interestingly, the batter pushed the pineapple out to the edges a lot of the time, leaving a pineapple ring:

All in all, they were a little more work for a much more impressive effect than just a cake mix.

What's your favorite kind of cupcake?