A Family Affair, Part 1

Several weeks ago, a recipe for pineapple bars came into my email inbox. I'm goofy for pineapple, and so are the boys and Mum, so I forwarded it along to the husband (for his consideration) and Mum, whom I thought might be interested in trying it out.

Mum managed to beat me to the punch on this one, trying it out and letting me know the results of her experiment. And am I ever glad she did. Here's a snippit of what she had to say about the recipe: "Frankly I can't imagine how it could have any pineapple taste
with such a small amount [just 1 cup of crushed per the recipe]...."

Ouch!

Her solution: reduce the amount of water added from 1 cup to 1/4 cup and using 20 ounces of crushed pineapple. She also kindly warned me to make sure to cook the pineapple filling until really thick, otherwise it runs and oozes into the oat crust. Not good!

When I set my sites on this recipe, I already knew I was going to replace the crust with one from Fat-Free Desserts and substituting some ingredients it calls for on top of that.

And boy did I make some substitutions! I swear, my culinary misadventures are going to make me the queen of making due with what ya have. Check out this list of "make due" solutions:

• I thought I had just enough Organic Zero for the crust, but I was wrong. I wound up using three-fourths of a cup of Organic Zero and about one-fourth cup (probably less) of Clabber Girl Sugar Replacer.
• I knew I was getting low on Wilton clear vanilla extract, but I thought the bottle had two teaspoons' worth left. Wrong! So in addition to the one teaspoon of Wilton extract, I had to add a teaspoon of Adams. I haven't seen Adams bottles on grocery shelves since McCormicks bought it in 2002 (and moved it from way South Austin), so that tells ya how old my bottle is.

I did plan a few substitutions:

• Dividing the needed three cups of flour between Gold Medal whole-wheat and regular all-purpose
• Replacing the one or one-quarter cup of water for the filling with the pineapple juice I had left over from last night's stir fry (which turned about to be three-fourths of a cup)
• Using Splenda brown sugar blend in lieu of the regular brown sugar

I also omitted the tablespoon of butter from the pineapple filling. I didn't see the point of it.

I'll admit that I was a bit nervous about the crust because I never have much luck with crusts. I blame the fat-free Promise butter I use; its high water content makes the crust...well, just not right. I bought a nifty double pastry roller at Sur la Table to help with the headache of pressing crusts into pans, and it worked like a charm, I'm happy to report. Of course, I also refrigerated the crust for about an hour after pressing it into the pan while I ran out to tackle some errands, and the refrigeration helped keep the butter from melting.

After 18 minutes of baking, the pineapple bars were out of the oven and cooling. They luckily cooled just in time for me to slice into 'em and serve up a nice square for the world's greatest Spin instructor.


Pretty yummy looking, aren't they? Well, they are! The pineapple juice I used helped give the filling a good pineapple flavor, and the sweetness wasn't thrown off by the two kinds of sugar replacers I used. Woohoo! Another victory snatched from the jaws of culinary disaster.