Valentine's Day with a 7-Week Old

As parents of a newborn (is he still a newborn at 7 weeks?  I'm not sure...) celebrating Valentine's Day is pretty far out of the picture for Dan and I.  We had purchased a Groupon for Medditeraneo (on Federal Hill) awhile back, so we asked my mom and dad to watch Harrison on Saturday night so we could go out for dinner.  It was a wonderful meal, but being on the Saturday before Valentine's Day, it didn't really feel like a big special occasion.  So yesterday, I took a chance at surprising Dan with a Valentine's Day meal, not quite knowing how it would come out as I'd never spent a day cooking and taking care of Harrison at the same time.

The menu:

Filet of Beef with Horseradish Sauce
Roasted Asparagus
Baked Sweet Potato
Pineapple Upside-down Cake

My intent was to document the creation of the entire meal, but as I quickly learned, cooking is enough of a chore when you are trying to take care of an infant, never mind photographing each step in the process. I started with the Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, since that isn't something that needs to be prepared right before serving, while the little one took his afternoon nap.  When he woke up in the middle of cooking, I put him in his vibrating, music-playing chair in the kitchen and he was content.

And so, I have an entirely documented pineapple upside-down cake.  I wanted to surprise Dan with dinner, so I tried to have it done for when he got home at 6:45, and Harrison just didn't want to cooperate with that schedule.  Between 5:30pm and 6:45pm when I was supposed to be cooking and photographing, I had to change him twice and feed him, leaving little time to do anything extra.  Since the meal wasn't that extravagant (or difficult), I don't feel so bad about not blogging it.  Maybe next time.

1 stick of butter
1 cup of brown sugar
1 can of sliced pineapples
1 jar of maraschino cherries
1 box of yellow cake mix (and the ingredients listed to make the cake, whatever they may be)

1.  Preheat the oven according to the yellow cake mix directions and prepare your pans with cooking spray.  I used two 8 inch round cake pans, but you could use square pans or a large rectangle pan as well.

2.  Divide the stick of butter into two separate microwave-safe containers.  Melt the butter in the microwave.  I used 50% power for 60 seconds.  I find that if you use 100% power, the outside gets hot so you get some melted some not, and it spatters all over the microwave.

3.  Pour the melted butter into the pans and sprinkle them evenly with brown sugar.

4.  Arrange the pineapples in the pans and add the cherries wherever they fit.  I like lots of cherries, so I stick them in everywhere.

5.  Prepare the cake according to the package directions. My cake mix called for water, oil and eggs.  I substituted the oil with applesauce because it works just as well and is way less calories.  For extra pineapple flavor, I substituted half of the water with pineapple juice from the canned pineapples.

6.  Pour the prepared cake mix over the pineapples and cherries in the cake pans.  Bake according to the cake package directions.

I thought that since I had two round cakes, I would make a double-layer pineapple upside-down cake.  But, there is a reason that you never see a double-layer pineapple upside-down cake - the top is too heavy and it causes the top layer of cake to split apart!  Since this was only for Dan and I, I wasn't too concerned so I left it how it was.  If you were making it for a party or very special occasion, I would advise against it.

You can see the cracks on the left and right sides...

I hope your Valentine's Day was as wonderful as mine and that every day is a celebration of how much you love the people in your life.

Until next time,