Fresh Pineapple Pie

Lorraine of AZ's Note:

We're all familiar with fresh strawberry pies cloaked in a glace topping. In this pie, it's fresh pineapple tidbits that are cloaked in a luscious glaze. In other words this pie is a kissing cousin to the strawberry glace pie. The recipe was printed in the Jacksonville, Florida, newspaper by food editor Joel Crea who said that this was one of the best-received recipes the newspaper has printed. Included is a wonderful nut crust which you can use in a number of other pie recipes which call for an ordinary graham cracker crust. I haven't tried this yet, but wanted to share it for those of you who would like something different for your summer menus.

• Total Time: 1 hrs 3 mins
• Prep Time: 40 mins
• Cook Time: 23 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 8

Yield: 1.0 pie

• 1 large fresh pineapple
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 3 drops yellow food coloring

Nut Crust

• 2/3 cup toasted ground walnuts
• 3/4 cup vanilla wafer crumbs
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 5 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions:

1. Twist crown from pineapple. Cut pineapple into quarters. Remove fruit from shell. Core and cut pineapple into bite-size chunks.
2. Combine sugar, cornstarch, lemon peel, and nutmeg in a large saucepan. Stir in water and food coloring. Cook, stirring constantly, until sauce is clear and thickened. Remove from heat. Add pineapple chunks. Cool.
3. Preheat oven to 325°F While filling is cooling, prepare the nut crust. Grind walnuts; spread in shallow pan. Bake in oven 10-15 minutes or until just roasted, turning occasionally to roast evenly. Advance heat to 400 degrees.
4. Add vanilla wafers, a few at a time to blender and blend to make enough crumbs to measure 3/4 cup. Combine measured walnuts, crumbs, sugar and melted butter. Press into bottom and up sides of a 10-inch pie plate. Bake in oven 8 minutes. Cool.
5. Spoon filling into cooled crust. Pour sauce evenly over fruit. Cover and chill overnight.

Reviews

[MiniCooperLady]

This is a really refreshing pie, perfect for summer. I used a medium size pineapple, one of those extra sweet varieties. I chilled the topping in the refrigerator as I was preparing the crust and it thickened nicely. I did need to prepare about 25% more crust (using a food processor for both the nuts and vanilla wafers) for it to evenly cover all of my 10" Pyrex pie plate. To make it more "tropical", I topped the filling with a layer of toasted coconut. Thanks for sharing the recipe; I was looking for a dessert that called for fresh pineapple and this was perfect!

[CunSwim]

I made this froma huge perfect pineapple last week and it turned out to be a runny mess. The Glace topping never gelled and I think it was because the pineapple had so much juice.