I haven’t yet published a recipe for a sweet thing. In my growing-up household sweetness was reserved for special occasions. Sweets included everything with refined sugar.

You’d think, therefore, that I’d’ve loved any sweet. Instead, I was disgustingly picky. Cake had to be more than crumbs-waiting-for-freedom imprisoned in butter cream icing. I only liked the fruit in pie (except apples) and the inside crust soaked with fruit juice, which I meticulously peeled off, sucked flavorless and spit out. Few flavors of ice cream appealed to me, and I had to stir it into a thick soup before eating it. I got nasty about cookies if they weren’t the right consistency and didn’t have nuts and fruit. I liked exotic desserts, but I remember only two: a mandarin orange parfait and a Baked Alaska. The parfait took three hours of intense preparation, so we didn’t serve it often. Meringue bothered me, and so did mint-chocolate-chip ice cream, which my mother always insisted on, so I never tried the Baked Alaska.

My mother has a taste for sugar. As children, we’d wake for late night water or consolation and discover her downing a bowl of ice cream. She always kept a bag of caramels handy and popped them like energy pills. To her credit, she was so deft at protecting us from sugar overload that we never questioned this inconsistency.

With all her kids out in the world acting and looking like adults, my mother is now Our Lady of Sweets. If it’s sweet she surrounds herself with it. This endears her to the grandkids. One of my sisters has a painful memory of her four-year-old son asking Grandma for a chocolate kiss when she happened to be out of this particular confection. Grandma immediately found a sugar cube, squeezed chocolate syrup over it and offered it to him. It was a hit. Grandma made another, and another, until my sister realized what was happening; too late to save herself from a cranky evening of sugar detoxing her son.

I’ve lived alone for most of my life so my sweet eccentricities caused no problem, until my mother asked me to live with her. I’m cranky, for instance, about allowing others to donate a subset of foods to family dinners held at our house, knowing that someone is going to sneak sugar into their salad dressings, baked beans, sweet and sour whatever, or make a dessert I despise. Thus, I usually end up making almost everything for what should be a joint effort.

Mom is in charge of birthday desserts for any extended family living within her range. Her favorite is ice cream cakes, which I don’t like. When I came to live with her I had nine months to decide what to do about my birthday dessert; refusing it is illegal. I thought about what I liked. Brownies, I decided, or pineapple upside-down cake. Or, both! What I created has become so popular that my sister Linda requests it for her birthday every year, too, (unless her husband objects ahead of time):

This is easy. Get a box of brownie mix, any brand. Melt 2 Tbl butter or margarine in the bottom of your baking pan. I use a glass pan. I’m assuming, though, that it will work with any pan. This concoction is delightfully messy, so, if you’re using metal, you might want to cover the inside with aluminum foil, just to make clean-up easier.

Line the bottom of the pan with in-their-own-juice, drained (reserve the juice) and dried pineapple slices. Regardless of what size pan you use, you’ll probably need to cut a few slices in half or quarters to distribute around the edges, so the bottom of the pan is covered. Place maraschino cherries in all the holes inside and between the pineapple slices, if you like. I hate maraschino cherries, but I’ve used canned-in-juice dark, sweet cherries with success. Crumble a hefty handful of brown sugar, either dark or light, over everything. Scatter a healthy amount of your favorite chopped nuts over that.

Prepare the brownie mix according to the directions on the box, either cake-like or chewy; except, substitute pineapple juice for the water.

Pour the brownie batter over the stuff in the pan. Bake it about 10 minutes longer than directed. When it’s done, run a butter knife around the sides of the pan (sometimes the melted sugar sticks to the pan and snatches a chunk of brownie) and immediately up-end the brownies onto a serving platter. Wait for a few minutes to lift off the baking pan, to allow all the good stuff to settle onto the brownies.

Play with the recipe. Add coconut, either in the topping or in the mix. Make peach or pear upside-down brownies. Any canned fruit will do, as long as it’s canned in its own juice. If it’s canned in syrup, substitute an appropriate 100%-juice juice. Use one of those mixes with caramel or cream cheese in it, if you think the taste will compliment the fruit you’re using. If you’re a chocoholic, throw some chocolate chips in the mix. Hey! It’s your birthday! Make it your way!

Text, Recipes & Graphics ©1999 by Gail Rae Hudson

Background Provided by