Hawaiian Dessert
HAWAIIAN PINEAPPLE ROLL
INGREDIENTS
3 cups pineapple pieces
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons peanut butter
1 teaspoon butter
4 egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar (1/3 cup more later)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
4 egg whites
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 flour (sifted is preferred)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
confectionary sugar
whipped cream
PREPARATION
MAKE SURE all the juice is drained away from the pineapple. All! If you put juice in this recipe, your Hawaiian log will be a Hawaiian crumble.
Cover baking pan with pineapple pieces. Sprinkle brown sugar over pineapple. Spread peanut butter as evenly as you can over sugar and pineapple. Crumble the butter into bits and scatter them over the top.
Separate egg yolks from egg whites. You can do this by partially cracking the egg shell and letting the white drain out or let the entire inside come out and gently fish out the yolk with a spoon. Don’t even think about removing the yolk with a fork.
Beat the egg yolks with whisk until they thicken. Mix in vanilla and 1/4 cup sugar
Beat egg whites until surface gets lumpy. Mix in 1/3 cup sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt until thoroughly blended
Add the egg-yolk mixture to the egg-white blend and stir, stir, stir. Your wrist should be getting quite a workout at this point. Spread this combination over the pineapple and brown sugar in the baking pan.
Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes. Loosen edges and turn over baking pan over large plate liberally sprinkled with confectionary sugar. Let stand for at least 5 minutes before rolling. After that, let it stand for an additional 10 minutes or until cool. Place pineapple roll on plate
Alternatively, if you are fortunate enough to possess a towel do the following instead of the instructions in the above paragraph. Sprinkle tea towel with confectionary sugar. Turn the baking pan upside down of the towel and let the cooked pineapple mixture fall onto the towel. Roll up the pineapple mixture as you roll up the towel. Let sit for 10 minutes or until cool. Unroll towel. Place resulting pineapple roll on plate.
Cover with whipped cream. This step is critical. It makes your dish taste better. The layer of whipped cream over the roll hides any mistakes in the Hawaiian roll. Did your carefully crafted roll fall apart when transferring it to the serving dish? Don’t worry, with enough whipped cream no one will ever know.
TIDBITS
1) Vanilla has alcohol in it. People craving alcohol bought lots of vanilla for “cooking.”
2) Captain Cook discovered Hawaii in 1778. He named them the “Sandwich” Islands. I love that name.
3) The Hawaiians killed Cook on his third Pacific voyage in 1779. It remains doubtful that he ever even tasted a Hawaiian pineapple roll before his death.
4) The British flag is part of the Hawaiian flag.
5) The Japanese precipitated America’s entry into World War II with their surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Honolulu. Their attack was provoked, in part, by America’s embargo of oil and metals to Japan. It is believed that Hawaiian Pineapple Rolls were not part of the embargo.
6) On the other hand, you need a sifter to sift flour. Sifting flour has been out of fashion for decades. If you don’t have a sifter, use your food processor and “chop” or “mince” it.
7) A food processor does wonderful work crushing and crumbling solidified brown-sugar blocks. Just be prepared for a brown-sugar cloud near the processor. If our weather reports could only be, “sunny with patches of brown-sugar clouds.”
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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