Totally Tropical Transformation

Fanny Cradock says almost any fruit, tinned or fresh, or even nuts, can be turned into a fabulous ice-cream. The most intriguing ones are flavours that you just can't pop down to the supermarket and pick up. Flicking through the pages of the ice-cream partwork I can't help but wonder if these long-forgotten flavours have disappeared for good reason, or indeed were they ever popular at all, apart from in Fannys mind? I mean have Ben and Jerry's ever considered Black Plum? Would Häagan Dazs whip up a quick batch of Green Grape? How about a Mackies Chestnut? Perhaps none of them have thought about Pineapple?

I've never seen Pineapple Ice-Cream anywhere. Perhaps I just lead a more sheltered life than I am prepared to admit, but I do hover around the freezers when I'm shopping looking at and, lets be honest, lusting after the ice-creams in particular. So, I'd probably have seen it. And bought it. And eaten too much of it. I'm a bit of an ice-cream fiend truth be told. So, you can imagine this particular partwork is especially pleasing for me!

Fanny uses her perfectly standard, perfectly whipped, perfectly frozen basic ice-cream, as ever. Just custard and cream whipped together and frozen really. To make it all pineapple-y she takes a tin of pineapple chunks and chops it all up into small pieces. I could only find pineapple rings when I went shopping, but my scissors made light work of them. I couldn't find the secateurs. Snip! Then smoosh! Transfer to the freezer for a bit, until the edges start to go solid, then whip it out, whip it up and whip it back in...

While you wait for it to freeze properly, Fanny has the perfect accompaniment which cunningly doubles as a garnish for presentation too. Fresh Pineapple. It's a little bit of a mystery why, if you were, in the first place, able to get hold of some lovely, fresh, succulent pineapple back in the early 1970's that you would opt to use a tin to make the ice-cream, and the fresh to make a garnish. Fanny's mind works in mysterious ways. Her mind is also excellent at dreaming up unusual and, erm, innovative, uses for things to transform them into other things that we least expect. Eggs as swans. Melons as baskets. Bananas as candles. You get the idea. Surely she had something extra special in mind for the humble Pineapple?

Fanny's instructions are to trim it and carefully, with a sharp knife, remove the skin. Sounding standard so far, no doubt she will soon suggest carving it into a swan... Fanny says to slice it fairly thickly into rounds. No swans then. And then each circle into quarters. No carving then. The next step is to dredge each piece in ordinary sugar to get them ready for assembly... Which means back into the shape of a pineapple. Oh. Transforming a pineapple into a pineapple. Kind of like Pineapple Jenga. But still a pineapple. The ice-cream itself is great, really tastes of pineapple. With the addition of some extra pineapple, it is well and truly a pineapple party. Served in a pineapple.