If you like pina coladas …

We recently had a pineapple fall off the plant, and set it aside in the farm stand to see if would ripen off the plant. Google told us no, but surprise, surprise, it ripened just fine. Perhaps it already had all the sugar it needed, because it was delicious, just perfect.

I couldn’t let such a wonderful thing go to waste, so I set out to put it into a cake. Here’s what I came up with.

Pina Colada Cake

Fresh pineapple and coconut paired together in a simple butter cake

Preparation time: 15 minutes Cook time: 30 minutes Serves: 6 to 8

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, divided in half
  • 2 cups chopped pineapple
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 whole eggs plus 1 egg yolk
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2/3 cup all purpose flour

For the topping:

  • 1 pint heavy whipping cream
  • ½ cup shredded coconut
  • ½ cup powdered sugar

Directions

Pre-heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 9” cake pan.

In a heavy-bottomed pan, melt half of the butter. Add the pineapple and cook on low for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the remaining butter and the granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and the extra egg yolk, beating well after each addition.

Add the salt, baking powder and vanilla extract, combining well and scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula.

Add the flour, and beat only until incorporated, about a minute at medium speed.

Stir in the cooled pineapple and melted butter until combined.

Put the cake mixture into the prepared cake pan, gently leveling the top until smooth.

Bake for 30-32 minutes, until lightly browned on top.

(After cleaning, put your mixer bowl and attachments into the freezer so they’ll be cold for the whipped topping.)

Cool on wire rack for 5 minutes, then remove from pan onto wire rack to completely cool before frosting.

For the topping, whip heavy cream with powdered sugar until stiff peaks form. Fold coconut into mixture. Spread over cooled cake, or pipe decoratively.

Variations

  1. Add a half cup of our Macadamia Nuts in the Nude 
  2. Add an ounce of dark rum to the pineapple and butter mixture for the flavor of rum in the pina colada, but the alcohol will cook away.
  3. Add an ounce of clear rum to the whipped cream mixture for a slightly boozy version of the pina colada.
  4. Double the recipe for the cake and bake it in a bundt pan for 50 minutes.

After I had the cake in the oven, I took the top that I’d so carefully twisted off, and planted it into our pineapple garden for a new plant to grow. It’ll be almost two years before that plant will fruit, but all we have to do is weed around it, because the soil is great and we get plenty of rain for it to thrive.

If you’d like to grow it yourself, root it first in a jar of water with some rooting hormone, then plant in a medium pot and keep it inside when it’s cold, but take out when it’s warm. In two years, you’ll have a pineapple! We often grow ours in our aquaponics greenhouse to get the roots started.

Pineapple top in aquaponics

 

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