Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cakes

I don't cook very much (um, or at all, really?) but I do enjoy baking, when an amazing recipe comes along. Our Tiki themed Valentine's Day inspired me to find a really great recipe. After some research, I found a good one on allrecipes.com.  

Some of the commenters there made some modification suggestions to the recipe and I followed them. I used a Pineapple Supreme cake mix and followed the directions on the box to make the batter. There's a heavenly sauce that goes in the greased muffin tins first - a mixture of 1/3 C melted butter and 2/3 C packed brown sugar. Spoon some into each cup and then it's time for pineapples.

My muffin tins make kind of small muffins so the pineapples had to be sliced to fit. If you have the bigger muffin tins you could probably fit a lovely pineapple ring in the base. Spoon the batter over the pineapple and bake for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Get your cooling and rack and tinfoil ready for the flip!

Run a knife around the edge of each muffin to loosen them. Place the rack on top of the muffin pan and flip it!

 Beauties! When I made the first batch for the party, I thought they smelled a lot like Twinkies, which surprised me! Are Twinkies pineapple cake?

Top with some boozy, rum cherries that you have on hand. Oh, wait, you don't have rum-soaked cherries on hand? Damn, you really need to meet my friend, Suzanne.

Put some Perez Prado and Harry Belefonte on the stereo and it's Tiki time!

Sprucing Up a Welcome Mat

A couple of years ago, I got a cute welcome mat from Target. It had a pretty, aqua colored damask design on it. Over the years, all of the paint came off so I decided to spruce it up with a new design!

See, you can kind of see it on the edge, but it looks pretty sad.

I started with two coats of aqua blue.

I enlisted the help of my husband because he's really good at drawing. I know this because he also helped me with my button animal silhouettes. Look how cute the seahorse turned out!

 Here it is all cut out!

A couple coats of white spray paint was all it took. Not too shabby! If the paint wears off of this one, we can just do another design. I love a project that involves rehabbing something I already have using things I can find around the house (you know me, spray paint is pretty much a staple in this household). I finished it just in time for the tropical themed Valentine's Day party we're throwing tomorrow! Aloha!