Pineapple downs and ups

If you want to feel good about your own cooking skills, please, read on. 

Today, since it is my oh-so-important b-date coming up, I decided to make some pineapple cupcakes (recipe here). The recipe sounded amazing. Low calorie recipe with a lot of fruit! To be exact, it has two 20 oz cans of pineapple in 24 cupcakes, which is slightly less than 2 oz of pineapple per cupcake. I think I did really well in the recipe reading and comprehension. I did excelled in ingredient shopping. 

Then, I made the cupcake dough and exceeded my own expectations. Only, the dough was enough for 23, not 24 cupcakes. I felt pretty confident, given that I had made cupcakes only once before...

Perhaps I shouldn't have.

The cupcakes turned out to be alright. Except.... a bit sticky and chewy and totally didn't rise. 

I felt a little less confident after tasting them, but still courageous enough to whip my first-ever frosting. Now, the pineapple frosting recipe here called for a VERY WELL DRAINED crushed pineapple. I swear, I really tried very very very hard. I may have even gotten a small muscle going from pressing the crushed pineapple. I mixed cream cheese, marshmallow fluff (very tasty by the way) and the pineapple.

The result, needless to say, was very liquid.

I panicked a little bit. I thought maybe it's because the cream cheese is too lumpy so I took a hand mixer and began whipping. Even with having pineapple 'frosting' flying all over the kitchen counter and the mixer speed in the red zone, the mixture was even more liquid to my surprise (next time I need to remember that more mixing means more liquid stuff). I thought perhaps mixing in more cream cheese-y substance would help. Although I was planning to eat my sour cream with salsa and chips, it had to be sacrificed for the frosting. 

With.no.success.

I have never seen a frosting this liquid in my entire life. I thought of boiling it, but then I realized that perhaps there is a reason why very few, if any, recipes call for boiled cream cheese. Then I thought of the all-mighty thickening agent - Mr. Corn Starch. Even he was of no help, even after at least 3 or 4 tablespoons. I may have put in even 5 or 6 tablespoons because after a while, I was just pouring that thing into the liquid frosting hoping that at least some of it 'sticks'. It did not. I was the only thing sticking in our kitchen. I was sticking to everything. But the frosting on my fingers tasted good and I really didn't want to throw it away (I admit thought that this was an already sunk cost).

Then I got an idea!

The liquid frosting very much reminded me of the mixture I poured into a cheesecake once. Now that I had used all of anything that could have been put into this thing, I thought baking it may be the last option. I have never been so thankful for a 24/7-open grocery store. I quickly drove there and bought a crumble crust and a Duncan Hines Cream Cheese Frosting - I think that will have to do for now, besides, it contains "real" cream cheese, right? Back at home, I popped some eggs and baking powder and sugar into the dough, poured it in the crust and put it in the oven. Then I waited, cleaning the kitchen in the mean time...

20 minutes... a liquid cake

30 minutes... still a liquid cake

45 minutes... a less liquid cake (was a bit brown on the top though)

60 minutes... FINALLY! The pineapple cheesecake was done. I have not tasted it yet, but it looks good. To sum up the results of my evening pineapple adventures: I now have 23 Duncan Hines cream-cheese-frosted cupcakes in addition to their BIG sibling - the pineapple cheesecake.

PS: To recap the cheesecake ingredients: Cream cheese, crushed pineapple, marshmallow fluff, sour cream, corn starch, eggs, baking powder, sugar, and a generic graham cracked crust.