Pineapple and Cinnamon Shortcakes

I am longing for winter to come to an end. I've had enough of this bitter cold and snow! My mind is thinking about warm weather, local farm markets and our own garden of vegetables and herbs. In the meantime while mother nature continues her rant along the east coast I decided to make what for me seems a more summer time dessert - shortcake.


With our store offering pineapples at a huge discount we gladly bought two of them. Pineapples remind me of Hawaii, of warm weather and SUN. Therefore I thought I would make a different shortcake recipe than what I am used to making and the fruit of choice - pineapple. How can you go wrong paying $1.88?

The shortcakes with the cinnamon are baking as I write this and they smell heavenly! What I did was take a recipe from Alton Brown of the Food Network and made it. Honestly we did not care for it. So I went back to the drawing board this morning. They needed to have extra sugar, the cinnamon was my idea and I wanted a nicer looking biscuit than a drop biscuit for the shortcake. And this time I did not sprinkle the tops with sugar as I increased the sugar in the recipe.

Hence, the adapted shortcake recipe:

• 2 cups flour (all-purpose) + extra for rolling
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 cup sugar + extra for the tops (optional)
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 4 tbsp. cold butter
• 3/4 cup half and half

1. Place the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and cinnamon in your food processor (or combine by hand). Let this whiz around for about a minute to combine all the ingredients.
2. Add in the cold butter pieces and blitz a little until it forms a crumble.
3. Slowly add in the half and half and pulse until incorporated. The batter will be somewhat wet.
4. Flour your work surface and some to the top of the dough. Knead together and then roll out to about 1/2 inch thick or a little less.
5. Using a 3 inch biscuit cutter, cut out the biscuits. Re-roll and cut out as necessary. I ended up with 7 biscuits.
6. Place them on a parchment lined baking sheet. Sprinkle a little sugar over the tops if you like.
7. Bake in a preheated 450° oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown.

And for the pineapple:

1. After removing the stem and slicing the bottom off and outer rind off I cut it into slices and using the handy gadget my husband made, removed the core.
2. Into a skillet on medium high heat I melted 3 tablespoons of butter and 1/4 cup brown sugar. To that I added the slices and cooked them for just a couple of minutes.
3. I assembled the shortcake with some of the pineapple and the drizzle which became like hardened candy but I loved it.

This delicious dessert cost me less than $3.00 to make! Serves 6-8 depending on how you cut the biscuits.