It's so hard to let go of a great weekend. Actually, it's hard to let go of any weekend and face the work-week, but when you've had a really good weekend you want to keep hold of it for as long as you can--which, in my case, was until 5:30 on Monday morning.
T. expressed the same sort of sentiment when she bounded out of bed at 6:00 on Monday. She's usually a little cranky and clingy on Monday mornings, and finds separating from me and home difficult at the start of the week. But yesterday she was energized and excited by the fact that she would have her first gymnastics class later that afternoon. "It was such a nice weekend," she sighed."But today is GYMNASTICS!"
I don't believe in overscheduling kids and filling their afternoons and weekends with non-stop activities. Scott and I decided some time ago that we are lucky that we can afford one paid extracurricular activity per child, as long as that activity stays within a certain budget. We still can't get L. interested in signing up for anything, but T. is always enthusiastically exploring her options. She took three back-to-back sessions of ice skating until she witnessed an accident on the ice--not a serious one, but drops of blood spattered across ice can be pretty gruesome. Since that day she's had a pretty full-blown phobia about hockey skates meeting flesh and her interest in ice-skating has--understandably--dwindled, even though we've encouraged her not to give up on it entirely.
Gymnastics is her choice for now. She's flexible and strong, but her small size sometimes makes her feel less confident than her peers in her physical abilities. I'm hoping that gymnastics will help with this, and give her that extra boost of excitement and energy on those tired I-hate-Monday mornings.
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We spent Saturday evening with good friends--one of my favorite ways to spend an evening. Who can argue with good food, good wine, good music, and perfect company--for kids and grownups alike? I brought over dessert--not something chocolatey, as is always my first (selfish) inclination, but a pineapple upside down cake. I tried the recipe out a few weeks ago, for another set of friends, and they loved it. This cake can easily be made vegan--as I did the first time I made it, by substituting non-dairy yogurt, but Saturday I only had a carton of vanilla Greek yogurt in the fridge, so I used that, and left out the vanilla. The consistency of the Greek yogurt added a moist density the cake, that I thought was especially memorable.
This is a super-easy and super-satisfying cake to make, if you're headed out to a dinner party, or if your kids have been good and you want to make them something special for dessert. T., who claims to not like pineapple, loves this cake, and while L. won't eat it, he does like to pick the cherries off the top.
Pineapple Upside-Down Cake (adapted from The Vegan Table)
9 tablespoons Earth Balance, melted and divided. You'll be using 5 tablespoons of this up front, and the remaining four when you mix the batter.
3/4 packed brown sugar
3/4 cup pineapple juice, divided
1 can sliced pineapple rings (I used a 20 ounce can)
1/4 cup maraschino cherries
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar (I used turbinado)
1/4 cup coconut milk (you can use soy, too, or mix the two, as I sometimes do)
1 container vanilla Greek yogurt
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. LIghtly oil a round or square cake pan (The Vegan Table suggests using a 9 x 13 inch cake pan)
Mix 5 tablespoons Earth Balance with the brown sugar and 1/4 cup of the pineapple juice. Pour this mixture into the bottom of the cake pan. Arrange the pineapple rings on top. Fill each ring with a maraschino cherry. Set aside.
In a bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and sugar. Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients, and add remaining 1/2 cup of pineapple juice, coconut milk, yogurt, and remaining 4 tablespoons of Earth Balance and vanilla. Sitir to combine.
Pour the cake batter over the top of the brown sugar and pineapple rings.
Bake for 30 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. I would wait up to 30 minutes before you invert. I waited only ten minutes the first time and the syrup oozed out everywhere. The second time I made the cake I waited 30 minutes, and the syrup had set.
(The cake before baking. I forgot to take a picture of it after it came out of the oven, and we gobbled it up so quickly there was nothing left to photograph!)