OLD FASHIONED PINEAPPLE DELIGHTS

These are Mr Saturday Night’s favourite traybakes, ever since a lady in his sister’s Florist shop brought them to work many moons ago.

It’s taken this long to get a recipe because they only seem to appear in old charity cookbooks, so I’m very grateful to our cousin Elisabeth for digging out her Mother’s much-loved and well-worn Women’s Institute cookbook to find this for me.

In my usual spirit of not being able to leave well alone, I’ve made a few small changes, to reflect newer ingredients etc. but these little slices of heaven turned out pretty much as Mr SN remembered them.

There is also one serious down-side (apart from the calorie count 😉 ) – you really must let them chill over-night, so that they’ll hold their shape. They are definitely better the next day, or even the day after that (if you have the strength of character – which I lack… )

All that said, they really are delicious, so let’s have a go..

Makes either 16 or 25 traybakes; although as a little goes a long way,  I got 25 out of this batch

EQUIPMENT:

• Food processor
• Medium sized bowl
• 8″/20cm square, 4cm deep baking tray, greased and lined with baking parchment

• Electric beater

INGREDIENTS:

For the biscuit base: 

• 200g Ginger nut biscuits, whizzed to crumbs (I recommend doing this in two batches, or else you’ll get lumps)
• 100g butter, melted

For the cream-cheese layer:

• 250g tub of Mascarpone
• 50g icing sugar
• 1 level teaspoon of ground Coriander (see NOTES ↓) or a Capful of vanilla extract

For the Pineapple and cream topping:

• 430g tin of crushed Pineapple in juice, drained (see NOTES ↓)
• 250ml whipping cream
• toasted desiccated coconut (optional) for a final garnish, or some more biscuit crumbs, or a sprinkle of sifted cocoa…

METHOD:

• Firstly, empty the pineapple into a sieve to drain.

• Heat the oven to 180 fan
• Crush the biscuits, and mix through the melted butter until it’s well combined.

 

• Empty this into the prepared tray and distribute evenly, pressing down into the corners etc. with the back of a spoon

• Bake for 15-20 minutes until crisp, then remove and cool.
• Make the Mascarpone cream – mix the mascarpone, icing sugar and ground Coriander or Vanilla extract (if using) together until well combined. Chill until the base is fully cooled.

• Whip the fresh cream and fold through the drained Pineapple.

 

Put it all together:

• Spoon the Mascarpone mix over the base, and spread it out evenly –

• Top this with the Cream and Pineapple mixture – again, spread as evenly as possible, and into all the corners!

• Cover with clingfilm and chill in the fridge overnight, or for at least 6 hours.
• After chilling, sprinkle over your topping (in these pictures I just used some cocoa powder)
• Then, using a sharp, pointed knife, cut the traybake into squares, and place each one in a paper case.

• Serve straight from the fridge, and store them there too.

NOTES:

• My 430g tin of Pineapple only yielded 155g when drained – I’ll probably use more Pineapple next time, although I did notice that the flavour intensified with time. Be careful that the Pineapple is not too wet to set the cream properly.
• I found it hard to find crushed pineapple, so I just used ordinary and mashed it up a bit with a fork – didn’t seem to do it any harm..

My Changes (from the original recipe)

• The original recipe used Digestive biscuits for the base. I hadn’t had a Digestive biscuit in years, so I don’t know what they’ve done to the recipe, but to me they were completely tasteless. This is why I decided to use Ginger nuts instead. (Ginger and Pineapple are really good together anyway)
• Instead of Mascarpone, the original recipe used butter cream – please feel free to use this is you want.
• The addition of the ground Coriander makes a really interesting change – it adds a slight citrus flavour to the Mascarpone.