Pineapple cake

My Bulgarian friend Teo is on a campaign to get me to eat more fruit, in the belief that most of my meals consist entirely of cake. He is, of course, wrong as I also eat biscuits and chocolate. So far Teo has brought me half a dozen mangoes, a bag of grapefruit and this week, two pineapples. I thwart his five-a-day attempts by baking the fruit into cakes. I found a lovely BBC Good Food recipe for caramelised mango upside down cake and have rung the changes on it using apples and also my recently acquired pineapples.

The correct way to serve fruit: before and after

 

It's not the prettiest of cakes but it is very tasty and is great served hot (i.e. fresh out of the oven. Turns out mothers are fibbing when they say eating hot cake gives you tummy ache. Hot dinners don't, do they? I can't believe it took me 30 years to see through this foul lie). Looks can be deceiving. I worked many years ago in Maison Blanc and always wondered why the ugliest cake - apple tarte tatin - sold out first. When I finally tried a tarte tatin, I realised why. It's de-bloody-licious.


The pineapple cake would probably have stood me in good stead for several meals, but luckily half a dozen friends came round for tea and cake this morning after they'd done the Race for Life. I also made some Race for Life cake pops.

The cake was all eaten, but Kate brought me a bag of manky bananas left over at the end of the race. And we all know what happens to manky bananas, don't we? More cake. It's like Terrence Malik's Tree of Life, except easier to understand.