Pineapple Pistachio Cookies With a Tangy Sugar Glaze

F

or a long time, I had a love-hate relationship with pineapples. To be honest it was more of hate than love. For some strange reason, pineapples used to give me an itchy throat as a child. I couldn’t even drink pineapple juice for the same reason. So there was no way you could get me to eat pineapple, even if you presented it to me in something I really liked.

If you get an itch on your skin you can scratch it. You might go overboard and scratch the heck out of your itch but at least, you have the satisfaction of having scratched your itch. Now imagine having to live with an itch that’s somewhere deep in your throat that you cannot reach……….

If you live in countries in the tropics, as I always have, you’ll know that there are going to be pineapples around some of the time and they will tempt you with their aroma, itch notwithstanding. At some point I finally gave into the temptation, only to discover that pineapples no longer made my throat itch!

 

Talking about the aroma of ripening pineapples, it one of the best ways to evaluate whether your pineapple is likely to be sour or sweet. Once you’ve picked out a good looking fruit, take a sniff at it. If you get a heavenly, fruity whiff then your pineapple is most likely to be perfect. If you cannot get much of an aroma, it might be unripe, possibly sour or else you’ve got a cold! And if it smells overly fruity and fermented then you do not want to spend your money on it.

 

People keep talking about what to do when life gives you lemons, oranges, apples or whatever. But what do you do when life hasn’t given you pineapples and you want to make something with pineapple? You go to Plan B and use tinned/ canned pineapple!  
I don’t really advocate processed foods, but I have to admit they do save the day occasionally and there’s no harm in using the mildly processed ones once in a while. I would prefer to use fresh pineapple if I could get it, because sitting in a can of sugar syrup seems to make pineapples lose much of their fruity flavour.

 

I’ve had this pineapple cookie project on the backburner for a while now ever since I saw some pineapple filled ones in some cookie book. However I wanted to make some cookies of my own and not follow the recipe from the book.
I opened a can of pineapple slices (use the bits or crushed pineapple if you can find them), and after much thought decided that pistachios and ginger would be nice flavours to have in a pineapple cookie. Some butter, brown sugar, oats and flour, an egg and some leavening power and I had a really nice cakey cookie that wasn’t very sweet. That’s right; this isn’t your average crunchy, chewy type of cookie.

 

So I made a simple lemony sugar glaze topped with candied ginger to my cookies, which made eating one of these cookies feel like have a little bite of a spiced and tangy frosted cake in cookie form. Now if you are a traditionalist and don’t think this is a cookie, then give it another name but try it out. Chances are you will like it. I’m not a cookie lover and I liked them. I might be biased since I made them, so don’t take my word. Just make some and then decide for yourself!

 

Pineapple Pistachio Cookies With a Tangy Sugar Glaze

 

 

Ingredients:

 

For the cookies:

 

1 can pineapple tidbits or slices

(you will need 2/3 cup drained pineapple, crushed/ very small pieces)*

100gm butter, at room temperature

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp pineapple extract

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup rolled oats

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup coarsely chopped pistachios

 

For the glaze:

1 1/2 cup icing sugar

1 tsp lemon zest

Couple of tbsps of lemon juice

 

Some finely chopped candied ginger to decorate cookies

 

Method:

 

*I used pineapple slices, so I drained them really well, then chopped them and ran them a couple of times in my blender to crush them. Don’t overdo this or you will have a purée. The idea is to just crush them so they lend texture to your cookie. If there is visible liquid in your crushed pineapple, drain it once more. Your crushed pineapple should be moist, so don’t press out all the sugar syrup.

Put the butter and brown sugar in a bowl and whisk really well till fluffy. Add the egg, pineapple and vanilla extracts and mix well.

In another bowl, lightly whisk together the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt and stir it into the creamed mixture.  Fold in the chopped pistachios.

Drop teaspoonsful of the batter, a little apart, on lightly greased baking sheets and bake at 165C (325F) for about 15 to 20 minutes or till the cookies are golden brown. Let them cool on the sheets for about 5 minutes and then transfer them to racks to cool completely.

To make the sugar glaze, put the icing sugar, and the lemon zest in a small bowl. Add just enough lemon juice to make a very thick glaze. Mix well with a spoon.

Once the cookies have cooled down, spoon a little sugar glaze on each and decorate with candied ginger. Leave till the glaze sets and serve. Otherwise store them at room temperature in airtight containers.

This recipe makes 30 to 36 cookies.

 

Del Monte and IndiBlogger have tied up to host the Del Monte Blogger Recipe Carnival and the Pineapple Pisatchio Cookies of mine are going there.

And my black and white photgraph of the cookies goes to Haalo of Cook Almost Anything who is hosting the 50th edition of Susan's Black & White Wednesdays,