Followup Post with Pictures

So… I think I’ve been walking around in some sort of a daze the last day or so. I couldn’t connect my camera earlier this week to download my pictures, because I was using the wrong cable. Whoops. Who knew that a “charge only” cable for a blackberry wouldn’t work to transfer data off a camera. Duh. I had even checked to make sure I wasn’t using the wrong cable, but apparently I’m blind.

Here are the pictures for the pineapple pudding cakes. The only progress shots I have are from making the brioche dough, because the caramel kind of took over once I got started with the assembly.

I make bread just about every week (my favourite is the white sandwich loaf from the Bread Bible), and this is basically how I put it together. Whisk together the sponge, dust the flour over it, cover with plastic wrap, and set the butter and salt measured out in a bowl on top, also covered. This gives my butter a chance to soften, and I only have to get the scale out once, first thing in the morning.

An hour or two later, you have the sponge bubbling away beneath the flour.

My normal procedure is to then dump the butter and salt in, and knead away. This recipe’s slightly different in that it requires you to knead the butter in a bit at a time, but that’s not much of a challenge with a good stand mixer.

The first night we ate these, the crystallized frothy sugar “caramel” hadn’t completely dissolved yet, so Mom scraped hers out of the ramekin, and crumbled it on top. She thought it was great. The leftovers, I heated in the microwave one at a time, and by the time I ate the last one, the sugar had completely dissolved, mixing with the extra spoonful of pineapple basting liquid, and making a nice syrup.

Here’s the lemon meringue cake.

You can see in the next picture what the tops of our cabinets looked like without counter tops. 😉

And… here’s my completed lemon meringue cake.

I realized partway through toasting the meringue in the oven that the spiky bits were a bit ill-advised, due to cooking a whole lot quicker than the rest, but Jay thought they were great, since they tasted like burnt marshmallow. I can tell he likes this one, because normally, when I ask if he wants after dinner, he says something to the effect of “Maybe later, I’m full right now.” When I asked tonight if he wanted Lemon Meringue Cake, after salad, filet mignon, and a baked potato, he said “Yes. Go get some. Right now.” He also keeps telling me I should make a meringue pie. Not lemon meringue, mind you. Just meringue. 🙂

Here’s a sneak peak of our kitchen, too.