Once upon a time, I embarked on a quest to find the perfect pineapple upside-down cake recipe. Why? I wanted to impress a boy, and this was his favorite dessert. What I didn't know was that this boy had very poor taste and actually preferred the processed and pre-packaged versions of "the real thing." For example, he often spoke of his love for macaroni and cheese, so one day I surprised him with homemade macaroni and cheese - the kind you bake in a casserole dish, with several kinds of cheese, replete with Ritz crackers crumbled on top - served with warm applesauce. His favorite, right? He took one bite, and said, "This is delicious!" (yes!) "What IS this?" (what??!) and, "ew, WARM applesauce?!" (whaaat?!!) Same story with the pineapple upside down cake - apparently it involves yellow cake mix. Not that I have anything against yellow cake mix; I'm actually quite fond of it - but I wanted to learn how to make a REAL pineapple upside-down cake, from scratch. With booze! I tried out three or four recipes before settling on one that really turned out great, with a few tweaks. The boy didn't work out, but the cake sure did.
