One of our favorite things to do is take a classic recipe and try the technique with some new ingredients. This obviously uses the idea of pineapple upside-down cake but not only did we swap out strawberry for the pineapple, it’s also using a moist sour cream lemon cake instead of the usual white cake.

I normally don’t do ingredient substitutions for dietary reasons. If I don’t want wheat flour – and I mostly avoid carbs during the week – I don’t eat bread, pastries or pasta. But sometimes you have friends who have allergies or other issues and you still want to have cake.

This recipe, originally from Yum Food & Fun For Kids magazine, is designed to work with almond flour. We’ve tried it with almond flour, cake flour, all-purpose flour and bread flour. It actually is best with the almond flour.

Cupcake recipes are usually regular cake recipes poured into little cups. Which means the frosting is usually regular cake frosting, too. But if you’re going to be decorating with a cherry on top, you’ll have a special ingredient handy that makes it easy to do this cherry flavored buttercream frosting.

I’ve seen a ton of lemon cake recipes online that include a box of lemon pudding mix. Funny thing is, I can’t remember ever having lemon pudding, or hearing anybody else say that they’ve had it. I’m starting to think lemon pudding mix is only used as an ingredient in other things.

I shouldn’t be so down on pudding mix, though. It’s perfect if you want a lemon-scented cake that’s so bland you can even feed it to kids who are afraid to try anything they’ve never had. But if you want a cake that actually has some flavor, you might want to try something made with real lemon, like this.