Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes

One of my favorite things about the holidays is the enormous amounts baking that is done. It's easy to know when my mom is baking a pineapple upside down cake because it fills the house with the aroma of pineapple, brown sugar, and vanilla. It's amazing. I thought it might be fun to try and replicate her cake in cupcake form.

To start, I used a golden vanilla cake mix. I beat the eggs first and added cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla extract. Instead of water I used the pineapple juice from a can of pineapple chunks. (You will need one 20 ounce can for this recipe.) I mixed in the pineapple juice and then the oil. Finally, I added the cake mix. I follow the order of eggs-water-oil as opposed to the directions on the box to ensure that the eggs are well beaten and that all the wet ingredients have been mixed together thoroughly.

I lined cupcake pans with cupcake papers. In the bottom of each paper I put a thin layer of light brown sugar. I cut a chunk of pineapple in half and then placed each piece on top of the brown sugar.

I filled the cupcake papers 2/3 of the way of batter and baked at 350F until a knife or toothpick inserted into the middle of the cupcake came out clean.

To serve you can peel the papers off of the cupcakes and flip them over on to a serving dish. Or you can serve them in the cupcake papers.

This makes between 24-28 cupcakes.

I still think my mom's cakes are best. :-)