Pineapple Preserves

It’s odd the way your taste buds shift and change over time, because when I was a kid, I didn’t really care for it at all. Now, it’s one of my favorite fruits, hands down.

I recently went through a phase where I had these really intense, wild cravings for pineapple. As a result I started to just have a lot of it sitting around, and as tends to happen when I have a lot of a particular ingredient, I gradually go from being content to just eating it raw, to wanting to experiment with it in my kitchen.

The typical way that most people enjoy and bake with pineapple is the obvious choice of the pineapple upside down cake. That’s all well and good, but upside down cakes aren’t my favorite kind of desserts, so I knew going into this that I wanted to try and do something a bit different.

The result(s) are this, as well as the next post that will be on the blog.

When you think of fruit ‘preserves’, pineapple probably isn’t the first–or likely even the second, third or fourth– one that comes to mind. However, if you’re willing to take a chance, trust me on this, and try this out for yourself, I think you’ll find that pineapple will be one that moves to the top of the list.

You’ll see that this recipe has very minimal ingredients and comes together in literal minutes. It’s practically fail-proof, and the results are so worth it. The preserves are the perfect blend of tart and sweet and because it’s pineapple it has a very refreshing overall lightness to it that I think other more traditional fruit preserves would be missing.

It’s of course perfectly delicious eaten all on its own or on top of toast, or with biscuits or scones, but not to worry: I’ll be back with a perfect way to put it to other equally tasty use 😉

Pineapple Preserves

Recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

2 (20 ounce) cans of crushed pineapple with juice
Between 1 -1 1/2 cups of white sugar (depending upon how sweet or tart your taste preferences are)
6 tablespoons of cornstarch
2 tablespoons of lemon juice

Directions

Combine all ingredients together in a medium saucepan.

Cook over medium heat and bring to a gentle boil, then reduce heat and cook for 5-7 minutes, until thickened.

Allow preserves to cool, then move to a resealable mason jar and refrigerate overnight to allow to set up properly.