Airinie Cooks: Her Eclectic Kitchen: Pineapple Jam

Its going to be Chinese New Year soon, and during this holiday season I am always reminded of these small soft melty cookies. I love them. You can find them everywhere in Malaysia - but homemade ones are usually the best. The main ingredient for the tart cookies is Pineapple Jam. You can buy them easily in the shops in Malaysia and you may find them in specialist stores, but I prefer to make my own.

Here my jam is dark in colour because I use dark brown sugar. I love the slightly smoky molasses flavour it adds into jam, but you can use any sort of sugar you desire.How long the jam will last in the refrigerator depends on how much sugar you use. Equal the amount of pineapple to sugar ratio and the jam should last for about 6 -8 weeks in the fridge. I don't like my jam too sweet and since I plan to use the jam immediately, I reduced the amount of sugar used because I wanted the sweetness of the pineapple to shine through more than the sugar.

Ingredients:

1 ripe pineapple, cleaned (about approx. 500g)

Sugar (if you have 2 cups of pineapple, use 2 cups of sugar. But use less if you want to.)

1 tbsp of lime juice

Preparation:

1. Grate/blend half of the pineapple and chop the other half into small and fine pieces, saving the juices.
2. Add in a small saucepan, and check if there is enough liquid to cover the pineapple pieces. There usually is, but if not, add just enough water to cover.
3. On medium heat, cover and cook until soft which is about 25-30 minutes.
4. Add in the sugar and lime juice, and stir to combine.
5. Cook uncovered on low heat until it has thickened which usually takes about 40 minutes.
6. Take it off the heat, and spoon in into a jar to store the jam for future use.

Serving suggestions:

I added some water in a saucepan, and added a tbsp of the jam. On low heat, I made a kind of syrupy sauce which I added chopped bananas. I coated the bananas with the syrup and removed from heat. I served this on top of French Toast. You can add some shredded coconut flakes on top as a garnish to make it a totally tropical-flavour extravaganza.