Pineapple Sunflower Cupcakes.

This is my first post-operation blog post, that isn’t about Sawyer or the surgery. So I hope all my new readers decide to stick around for the happy stuff too! We are still dealing with Sawyers recovery, but there is less drastic changes each day. He is still swollen but not enough for strangers to notice anymore. Still a little bruising under his eyes, and of course the no hair thing which throws me the most. But today we are getting a visit from some friends from Calgary, and going to a big family BBQ. So its too much of a happy day already to be talking about cranio stuff!

So lets move on to the good stuff! I haven’t talked cupcakes for 2 weeks now. Unheard of in my house. In fact this is the first time in a very long time that I haven’t brought cupcakes with me to the family gathering. Which is nice that I don’t have to make anything this first weekend home, but I feel so lost with not bringing something. So instead I’m just going to share some that I made a couple weeks ago for a friends birthday!

Pineapple Sunflower Cupcakes! Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and a pineapple sunflower to top each one! I love the way they turned out. Here is a breakdown of how to make the pineapple sunflowers.

Clockwise from top left.

1. Cut the outside off the pineapple. {Can you tell I hate pinapple, I don’t know if the outside has a special name or if there is a term like peeling for it. I despised the smell of my hands for the rest of the day.} Remove the eyes.

2. This is the hard part. You need to slice the pineapple extremely thin. Most of mine were too thick, or it would only slice it in half. So a lot of my pineapple flowers were wasted. I need to find a better way of doing it next time.

3. Bake at 250 until edges slightly curl and start to turn brown. Flip and repeat on the other side. I burnt a lot of mine because for some reason I knew it was 250 but set my oven to 350. So mine were very dark and even burnt. I didn’t realize my mistake until my last batch. So I only got a few usable ones.

4. These are going to be very wet even after baking, so you want to make them at least 1 day ahead of presentation. After baking, lay the pineapple in cupcake trays and let dry overnight.

Then ice your cupcakes as usual. I wanted mine to be a simple black and white look to them, so I did a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. Then I pressed the dried pineapple flowers onto select cupcakes. These were a big hit at the little birthday gathering. I am excited to try them again, with all the kinks worked out. And now you can too!

Enjoy.