Make Your Mother This Pineapple Upside-Down Cake And Cocktail

This weekend marks a celebration of the people who shape young lives with care and devotion, who tirelessly teach and motivate, who coddle injuries and still expect the very best performance. Then, the day after the Kentucky Derby is Mother's Day. Let's make Mom a cake and a drink; she deserves at least that much.

Pineapple upside-down cake is an American classic. Depending on the vintage of your mother, it may bring back memories of her own mother or of the domestic hellscape in which she reared you. Make it in your large cast iron skillet, or don't even fucking bother. If your mother raised you right, she taught you how to take care of cast iron cookware. If you treated her right, maybe she passed a well-seasoned pan to you. If you're confused by all this cast iron veneration, go to hell (or amazon dot com to buy yourself a cast iron set and figure it out!).

This recipe is adapted from the 1994 version of  The Fannie Farmer Cookbook,  which calls for way too much brown sugar.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

1 and 1/2 sticks butter

1/2 cup brown sugar (Fannie calls for a whole cup, some recipes say just a quarter)

1 20 oz. can of pineapple rings (reserve the juice)

Maraschino cherries

1/2 cup milk

An egg

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 and 1/2 cups flour (Go back and read this for a discussion of the importance of using the right kind of flour, if you care about your mother)

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup sugar

Melt half of a stick of butter in your cast iron pan. Move the butter all around so it covers the entire interior surface (i.e., up the sides) of the pan. Add the brown sugar, and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until the sugar has melted and the whole thing is nice and smooth.

Remove from heat. Add 1/4 cup of the pineapple juice. It's going to sizzle and pop and appear to break the nice butter/brown sugar syrup you just made. Do not worry.

Place as many pineapple rings as can comfortably fit, and place a maraschino cherry in the center of each ring. Goddamn, that's beautiful. Set the pan aside.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and sugar.

In a different pot or pan, melt the rest of the butter. Off the heat, mix in the milk, egg, vanilla, and maybe a little bit of that pineapple juice (but not all of it, you'll need some later). Add this to the dry ingredients, and mix them until smooth. Pour this over the pineapples which are waiting.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for about a half an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean. The exact time will depend on the diameter of your pan, among other things. (Do I really need to explain that to you? Fuckin' Christ!)

Allow the cake to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. Then turn it out onto a plate, CAREFULLY. Turn it away from yourself, so as to avoid dripping hot sugar and butter onto your genital region. NOW, do you understand why it's called upside-down cake?

Now you've got a jar of maraschino cherries and some leftover pineapple rings and juice. Let's add tequila! For Mom.

Pineapple Upside-Down Matador Sunrise

The matador is a classic cocktail of pineapple juice and tequila. The upside-down matador is the sexual position your mother used to conceive you.

2 oz. white tequila

1 oz. pineapple juice

1/2 oz. lime juice

1 maraschino cherry

1 pineapple ring

Use a toothpick to secure the cherry in the center of the pineapple ring. Place into a chilled cocktail glass.

Shake the tequila and juices with ice (in your amazon dot com shaker -- what a great way to support Yr Wonkette with alcohol and a kickback!). Strain the drink into the prepared glass.

Spoon a little of the syrup from the maraschino cherry jar into the glass, and let it settle to the bottom of the glass.

Now you've made a cake and a cocktail that would make any mother proud.