Better Than Sex Cake, or, Piña Colada Pudding Cake

Presented without comment, except to say that a mimeographed copy of a recipe labelled simply 'BETTER THAN SEX' and previously owned by my grandmother is probably the best way to explain my 2018 so far. Happy Valentine's Day, friends!

 

the verdict: 

3 spoons out of five. This cake is really tasty and (these days) unusual, but the whole 'make it the night before, then decorate it right before you serve it' make it a bit of a faff and I can't see myself going through it again. That said, if pineapple and coconut are your thing, this cake is a moist tropical paradise with the texture of a sticky toffee pudding and all the flavour of a beachside cocktail. Make up a different name for it and serve it to your friends, and no one will be the wiser.

ONE YEAR AGO: CRAZY CHOCOLATE CAKE
TWO YEARS AGO: CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH DATE FILLING

The recipe:

Better Than Sex Cake

the directions:

Make cake as directed.
While cake bakes, heat pineapple and sugar to a boil and cook until sugar melts and mixture thickens slightly.
When cake is done baking, poke all over with a wooden skewer.
Once cake is mostly cool, pour pineapple mixture over it and spread evenly.
Allow to cool completely, then spread pudding evenly over cake.
Refrigerate overnight.
Immediately before serving, whip the cream with powdered sugar until soft peaks form.
Spread whipped cream over cake and decorate with toasted coconut.

the ingredients:

1 recipe yellow cake (from ½ of this recipe, or your favourite 8x8 cake)
10 oz (295ml) crushed pineapple with juice
½ c (100g) sugar
2 c (470ml) vanilla pudding (your favourite recipe or, if you're stateside, 1 3.4oz box instant vanilla pudding)
1 ½ c (360ml) whipping cream
1 tbsp powdered sugar
¼ c (20g) desiccated coconut, toasted in the oven until brown

Wind Pudding, or Pineapple Marshmallow Concoction

This week marks the six month anniversary of this blog, which is pretty cool. That means I've made 72 dishes from the box including 6 cheesecakes (with another on the way this week!), 2 disasters, and one boozy drink.

I've taken a lot of pictures, learned where the best light in my kitchen is, and found a workable substitute for shortening. I got a job, went on holiday (3 times!), and celebrated both an anniversary and a birthday with key lime pie. I've also barely put a dent in the total recipes in the box, but I'm trying to go easy on myself on that front-- it took Eleanor 40 years to collect 'em, so as long as I get through them faster than that, I'm still winning, right?

In honour of the six-month-iversary (demiversary?) of this blog, here's some potty humour for you: Eleanor was so painfully proper that she referred to bodily functions as 'chi-chi' and 'boo-boo.' Even when she was potty-training her own kids, that's the only way she ever referred to using the bathroom. Before you ask, no, I do not know which one was 'chi-chi,' and I'm pretty sure I'm ok with that.* Anyway, I always thought those were the two dumbest names I had ever heard of for anything related to... you know. But then I moved to Scotland and learned the phrase 'trapped wind,' which means... well, I'll leave it to your imagination and just say that it's not fit conversation for a food blog. A co-worker of Judson's taught it to him one day and ever since it's become the Scottish phrase that most cracks us up, despite how gross it is. If you ever come visit us in Scotland, just know that the word wind has a whole different meaning for us now.

So of course when I found a recipe for Wind Pudding in the box, I was immediately as tickled as an 11-year-old boy, especially when I realised it's literally a 3-ingredient recipe that sounds (and, in fact, is) terrible.

When I made this, it was a miserable failure. Although I'll be the first to admit that I regularly suffer from cooking-related mishaps, I have a hard time believing this one was my fault. I really think that marshmallows in Scotland are just different than their American counterparts. Seriously: I think American marshmallows are mostly vegetarian these days, but the ones here-- which are much more delicious, in my humble opinion-- are still made with beef gelatin, which renders them chewier and stiffer than American ones, and, in this case, less likely to melt in pineapple juice. I think the marshmallows in the recipe were supposed to kind of dissolve in the pineapple, then the whipped cream would have made the entire mixture like a creamy Dole Whip. But instead, the marshmallows just swelled slightly, holding their shape and texture, and just sitting on top of the pineapple, which was now extra-dry because the spongey marshmallows soaked up all the juice. It's also possible that the size of the marshmallows contributed to this problem-- mini marshmallows have not yet been invented in Scotland, apparently, so I had to use regular-sized ones. Although the recipe doesn't specify the marshmallows should be miniature, I can't imagine it would have hurt.

Even Judson turned up his nose at this, and Judson loves marshmallows.

In conclusion, I have no idea what the 'wind' in wind pudding is referring to. Was it a reference to the tropical breezes of Florida and the fact that they carry with them the sweet smells of tropical fruit, like pineapples? Or was it referring to the air in the marshmallows? I don't know, and I failed at this recipe, big time. Don't make this recipe. Please.

*As a kid, my mom made the grave mistake of telling me this, and I've still never passed a bottle of Chi-Chi's salsa without giggling.

The verdict:

1 spoon out of five. This is the dumbest recipe that exists.

The recipe:

Wind Pudding

the directions:

Soak marshmallows in pineapple overnight.
The next day, whip the cream.
Fold whipped cream into pineapple mixture gently.
Take a bite and then immediately wish that you hadn't.

the ingredients:

1 can crushed pineapple
1 cup marshmallows
½ c whipped cream

French Pudding, with apologies to the French

Eleanor was superstitious. More superstitious than any person I've ever known, and it wasn't an ironic superstitiousness, either: she was totally sincere. AND I don't mean, like, “broken mirror” superstitions, but weird ones like “if you put your shirt on backwards you have to leave it that way because it's bad luck to turn it around,” and “don't turn the page of your calendar to the new month until the new month has already started.”

So, in honour of Friday the 13th, which would have been Eleanor's least favourite day of this year, I give you my first disaster recipe from the box. It is not a recipe for pudding. Nor is there anything about this recipe that is French, with the possible exception of the inclusion of unsweetened whipped cream, but I think even that's a bit of a stretch. This is sort of like a trifle, but you're supposed to make it in a baking pan, and it includes raw eggs... I guess if I get food poisoning, we'll know today is truly an unlucky day. And for a no-bake recipe, get ready to use all of your dishes again.

I made a couple of substitutions here: I can't get Nilla Wafers anywhere, so I used Digestive Biscuits. Also, I can't find crushed pineapple in this country and I don't know what size “a small can” is, so I used two tiny cans of pineapple rings, which I pulverised way beyond “crushed” in my food processor. 

Anyway, it's way less bad than I thought it would be, but I still think it probably counts as a disaster. Eleanor may have liked it (there's a note in her handwriting that reads “delicious” in the top corner), but I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. In the 1960s it might have been awesome, but today it's kind of just a mess that reminds me of something that would have been served at a church potluck when I was a kid.

The verdict:

1 spoon out of five. I think it still deserves a single spoon because the recipe clearly worked the way that it was supposed to, it's just that the flavour combination and texture and its general existence are not really appetising. I do, however, feel like this is a fixable recipe: what if the cookie layers were cubed angel food cake? Or there was a layer of white cake, then pineapple filling, then a white cake layer and then the custard/whipped cream combo was the frosting? It's probably possible to fix this up into something edible, but if you make it as listed here, it's probably not going to be great. Unless you just really like canned pineapple, I guess.

The recipe:

French Pudding

The ingredients:

8 oz Nilla Wafers or digestive biscuits, crushed
4 oz butter
1 ¾ c powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 c whipping cream
1 small can crushed pineapple, or 2 small cans pineapple rings, crushed in a blender or food processor
½ c chopped nuts (I used pecans)

THE DIRECTIONS:

Sprinkle half of the cookie crumbs into the bottom of a 9x13 pan, as evenly as possible.
Cream butter, powdered sugar, and eggs until well-mixed, then pour it into the pan on top of the crumbs.
Whip the cream until fluffy, then spoon it evenly over the butter mixture in the pan.
Spoon the crushed pineapple over the whipped cream evenly.
Sprinkle the chopped nuts and the remaining cookie crumbs over the pineapple and press down gently.
Refrigerate until ready to eat, so, basically refrigerate forever.

Yields a 9x13 pan of pudding, and if you could find 35 people who wanted to eat it, I bet it would comfortably feed all of them.