Lilu loves pineapple so what better cake to make for her birthday than a pineapple upside-down cake.  Farmor had never heard of a pineapple upside-down cake before so it was my turn to show off a bit of my culture.  Sometimes cooking recipes from back home can be a bit tricky in Norway, especially cakes.  Firstly, they don’t have self-raising flour here so you have to make your own with plain flour and baking powder.  Sometimes is doesn’t always turn out.  Norwegian sugar is made from sugar beet, whereas I’m used to cooking with cane sugar.  Cane sugar is great for caramelising and reacts better for raising cakes, not to mention that it is sweeter.  Beet sugar is a little tricky to use and most often only works with Norwegian recipes, not my Australian ones.  Luckily I found some Engelsk sugar in the store so I could make my pineapple upside-down cake extra fluffy.  The top turned out nice and brown but there was no Engelsk or Norwegian sugar used there.  Instead I used Farmor’s special dirt sugar, nicknamed so by the family because it looks just like that – dirt.  It is actually a brown sugar from Bolivia that has all the husks and bits still in it for extra flavour (and fibre).  It tends to dye food with a stronger brown colour and gives a great effect – perfect for grøt.  In the end I was able to impress Farmor with an exotic recipe and celebrate my daughters birthday with a piece of our heritage.