30 Before 30: Pineapple Cake (Pastel de Pina) (#4)

Aaron and I have gotten into fajitas lately. It's probably because I bought him this book for his birthday (look for it in an upcoming post) and we've been trying a lot of different recipes from it. Due to the 30 before 30 nature of this month, I wanted to make a dessert to go with our fajitas. My first thought was flan, but surprisingly my Mexican cookbook does not have a recipe for basic flan. It has pumpkin flan, coconut flan, coffee flan, and chocolate flan, but not your regular, caramel flan. I knew I could find a recipe for it online, but that is not part of the challenge. So I dug deeper and found this fast and easy cake. I think it would be better for brunch than after dinner and could use some more pineapple, but overall, a tasty way to end a fajita dinner.

Pineapple Cake (Pastel de Pina) via 1,000 Mexican Recipes:

Makes 1 8-inch square cake, about 9 servings

1 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 c. plus 2 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 c. canned crushed pineapple with juice

1 large egg, beaten

1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan and dust with flour. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. In a medium bowl, mix the pinapple, egg, and vanilla. Add to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. It's a little on the thick side, so you'll need to push it around evenly. A spatula really helped me with this. Bake until dark golden brown on top and a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven to a rack and cool completely in the pan. Cut the cake into squares and serve directly from the pan. The recommendation is to top it with ice cream or whipped cream. Do it.

Store, covered, at room temperature up to 3 days.

This is a very moist and easy cake. I think it would be even better if you mixed in some pineapple juice and some of the crushed pineapple with the whipped cream before topping it.

Recipes Complete: 4

Recipes to Go: 26