I had an excess amount of pineapple in my fridge last week (a situation I’ve found myself in more than once) after cutting up a fresh one to eat with dinner. Even after we’d had our fill with dinner and I’d done some snacking on it through the week I still have enough left over that I needed to do something with it.  So I started brainstorming what to do.  Pineapple ice cream.

I found a few recipes, but this one with pineapple cooked down with sugar and cinnamon sounded so delicious.  The blog where I found the ice cream recipe had a great set of pictures showing how to cook the pineapple.  She even includes are warning about being careful not to leave it cooking while you go do something else.  Well, even with the warning I left it cooking over low heat while I spent some time outside with the kids and it cooked a little too much.  After cooling it some of the sugar had hardened on the bottom of the pan.  I kept going with the recipe and was glad I did because the deep caramel flavor with the pineapple and cream was spectacular.

I wound up using the raw egg version, but here are some cooked egg custard vanilla ice cream base recipes that you could easily substitute.  Just stir the cooled pineapple puree into the cold custard and freeze in the ice cream maker.

• Alton Brown’s Vanilla Ice Cream Base
• Martha Stewart’s Vanilla Ice Cream Base

This ice cream is rich, which isn’t hard to predict without trying it when you see the ingredient list!  With all that cream and milk a little goes a long way.   I really prefer to eat rich and creamy ice cream, it’s so much more satisfying.  I always wind up eating more of the light and airy stuff and it’s never as good as a small amount of the good stuff.

Caramelized Pineapple Ice Cream

From La Gringa’s Blogicito

Ingredients

• 5 cups of fresh pineapple chunks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 – 1 1/2 cups milk

Directions

1. Place pineapple chunks in a large saucepan over medium heat.  Add sugar and cinnamon and stir together.
2. Cook, stirring occasionally and monitoring the heat so that it is just at a medium simmer, for 20-30 minutes.  The pineapple will release a bunch of juice at first and then start to thicken up.  Remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes.
3. Place pineapple and as much of the sugary stuff as you can scrape from the pan into a blender or food processor and mix until very smooth.
4. Transfer to a bowl and let cool in the fridge until cold.  (You can also put it in the freezer to speed up the process without letting it freeze.)
5. Whisk eggs in a large bowl for 2 minutes.  Add in the cream and the pineapple puree (Add in all of it if you have 1 1/2 cups or less, if you have more than 1 1/2 cups, then save the excess for ice cream topping).
6. Add in enough milk to make no more than 5 cups of ice cream mix.
7. Place the bowl in the freezer and stir every 30 minutes for 1-2 hours, until the edges of the mixture begin to freeze.
8. Transfer to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturers instructions.
9. Transfer to a freezer safe container and let chill in the freezer for at least 1 hour.