May be served as a fridge tart layered with crushed biscuit crumbs or in transparent dessert bowls with pineapple swirled through and sweetened Granadilla pulp, poured over the top.




I made my fridge tart with homemade, pre-baked, shortbread biscuits, which I then cooled, once cooled, I roughly broke them up in the food processor, and gave it all a whizz until finely crumbled.


Notes: I find jelly does not set the pineapple, even after cooking, but definitely does give it a flavor boost! You may also use this for a cake icing, filling or topping using your vanilla pudding powder as a stabilizer but the cream must be well chilled together with beaters before whipping and MUST be whipped to full capacity before folding in or you will end up with a very heavy bad textured dense desert without any fluffiness at all.

 Make sure you whip cream to double its volume before folding it in.




Recipe:1 (filling) is my top favorite. Followed by Recipe 2, which is a great standby if you are out of jelly or condensed milk and need a quick-setting tart without overnight refrigeration.
Both recipes make 2 tarts each – whilst recipe (filling): 1 makes 2 very generous tarts.
First, we begin by making the pastry. – I give you 3 of my best pastries to choose from.
Pastry 1: Uses bought biscuits for an instant biscuit crust: (Enough for 2 tarts)
Total Calories in both pastry crusts: 1,709
Note: If your biscuits are already sweet, omit the sugar when making your biscuit crust.

Ingredients:
200 g biscuits
125 g butter, melted (may use good tasting margarine to economize)
Pinch salt to taste
22 g sugar (only if using Marie biscuits) Do NOT add sugar with Tennis biscuits

Method: Dissolve butter until very hot in the microwave. Break up the biscuits by adding in broken pieces to a food processor, together with sugar only if using South African Marie biscuits, or place them in a bag, and crush them with your feet, or a rolling pin until fine crumbs. Stir biscuit crumbs into your hot melted butter. Empty into pie plate and press out with an inverted drinking flat-bottomed glass. Bake 180 C until golden. Set aside to cool. – Note: Some people don’t bake this crust, but it is preferable as it gives you a fresher tasting crispier texture but is entirely up to you.

Pastry 2: Is a Homemade Press in the Pan Shortcrust Pastry: (Enough for 2 tarts)

Total calories in both pastry crusts: 1,053
Ingredients:
90 g (180 ml) Cake Flour
90 g (90 ml) butter or use a hard margarine
30 ml castor sugar
Generous pinch salt or to taste

Method: I do this directly in the pie foil container: Sift together flour, castor sugar, and salt. Rub in butter until it forms crumbs. Knead the dough to form a ball. Press pastry into a 23 cm diameter foil tart dish with a floured, hand-held pastry press or your fingers.
Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes. Remove from oven. Set aside to cool.

Pastry 3: Is the late Maisie Edmead’s Scottish Shortbread –Total calories: 1,449
Lovely if you bake and crush them to use in desserts or savored just simply as shortbread biscuits. She was well-known for her shortbread and used to bake these for the family each Christmas. The best I ever tasted was hers. In her words she would say, she beat the hell out of them in her Kenwood chef, and believe me her biscuits were mouth-wateringly delish! The last I saw of her, well, she had made it into her 80s. – Bless her soul!:)
Her Formula was: 3:2:1 Translated as 3 parts flour to 2 parts butter to 1 part sugar and salt to taste.
I baked mine as 1 whole piece and once completely cooled down I crushed it into crumbs using a food processor and lined the bottom of my Tupperware dish as seen in the picture.

Ingredients:
100 g cake flour
50 g cornflour
100 g butter
50 g sugar
Salt to taste

Almond or vanilla essence are optional and are added to taste – Take care with almond essence as it can overpower! – Maisie Edmeads never added it, but I love the hint of almond.
I swapped cornflour for custard powder which is why the funny color to my biscuit crust.







Ingredients for Filling: (Recipe 1) My top favorite!
This makes two very generous tarts!
Notes: In the below ingredients, the pineapple pieces (flesh) is weighed after the inner core and peels have been discarded. Be sure to buy extra weight in pineapple. Around 25% extra should be fine and please don’t forget to catch all the juice you can when you chop it. Do not lose any!

Total Calories of filling: 3,828
Ingredients:
942 g (1 very large) pineapple flesh and juice – Weight excludes inner core and skin
1 (385 g) can condensed milk
2 (80 g each) boxes pineapple jelly (628 calories in 2 boxes of Spar pineapple jelly)
148 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice together with pulp (No pips or whites please!)
2 (90 g each) boxes vanilla pudding
500 g cream, chilled

Method: Place clean pineapple on a large flat suitable container with low sidewalls to catch juice so no juice is lost. Remove pineapple peel, removing as much of the flesh as you can. Discard or eat the hard inner core. Dice pineapple into small cubes. Do not shred. Place pineapple flesh and juice in a microwave-safe container, covered and cooked on high for 12 minutes so that it comes to a rolling boil. Remove and stir in your jelly until all jelly crystals have dissolved. Add your vanilla puddings and stir well into your pineapple mixture. Set aside to thicken and cool down to room temperature. Even better if you can chill your mixture to speed things up. Stir in your condensed milk. Whip Chilled cream with your chilled electric beaters until cream doubles in volume. – Do NOT use a stick blender! It will be a disaster! – Do NOT over whip! Fold your chilled cream gently with over and under motions into your cooled pineapple mixture. Ease mixture gently into 2 pre-prepared tart pastry cases or 1 large container. Chill several hours or overnight before serving as this is a soft set.
Ingredients for Filling: (Recipe 2) 
This recipe is without condensed milk. Use only if you are out of condensed milk. The filling of recipe 2 can also be used as a cake frosting or filling.

Total Calories of Filling: 2,153.      Total Weight of Filling: 1165 g

Below are my own weighed amounts. This is for an instant set which does not need overnight refrigeration. For an overnight soft set, you may up the pineapple as done in recipe 1. This recipe makes 2 tarts, but not as generous as recipe 1. Use the same recipe for pastry crust as in recipe 1.

Ingredients:
620 g pineapple (May add more as in recipe 1 but will need overnight refrigeration)
160 g sugar 2 (90 g each) boxes vanilla pudding (I use Moir’s South African brand)
2 (80 g) boxes pineapple jelly adds extra special flavor (Optional)
100 g freshly squeezed lemon juice
456 g cream
Follow same method as in recipe 1 above.
Enjoy!

Pineapple Tips: Ripen pineapples upside down or they will rot if you stand them on their base. When selecting a pineapple, if it is ripe and you sniff the base you will smell it. You may eat the core, or try using it as a meat tenderizer, it is full of bromelain. Cook the rest to prevent your mixture from fermenting and burning your mouth. Pineapple enzyme is known as bromelain and is concentrated in the core, use it to tenderize steaks, and in this case, do not cook. Fresh pineapple breaks down protein structures, like gelatin, and is destroyed at 70 deg C and will no longer burn your mouth once cooked. It will not set jelly or gelatine, even when cooked. I have tried with both tinned and fresh!