Home › Batter Cakes › Pineapple Fritters
Pineapple Fritters
Peel and slice a fresh pineapple, cut into thin slices, and, if very large, cut the slices into narrow, oblong pieces, dip in the batter, and fry. Or drain the liquor from a can of chopped pineapple; cook the liquor with sufficient sugar to make a rich syrup. Mix the pineapple into the batter and drop by spoonfuls into hot fat or on a well-buttered hot griddle. Fry until a rich brown, and serve the syrup hot with them.
A fritter recipe of the older kind, where the batter itself is assumed from the surrounding pages and the cook is expected to know the frying. Two versions are offered: slices dipped and deep-fried, or chopped fruit stirred through the batter and cooked like a drop cake.
- The batter is not given hereThe batter is not given here — cookbooks of this kind often printed a general fritter batter elsewhere in the section and expected the cook to refer back to it. Any standard fritter batter works — roughly 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, a pinch of salt, 1 egg and about 2/3 cup milk, beaten smooth and rested 15 minutes.
- Fat temperature"Hot fat" for fritters means 365–375F. Below that the batter drinks oil and stays pale; above 385F the outside browns before the fruit heats through. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Dry the fruitThis is the hinge. Pineapple is very wet, and batter slides off a damp slice and spits in the fat. Blot both sides of each slice on a towel before dipping, and drain canned pineapple thoroughly in a sieve.
- Slice thicknessAbout 1/4 inch for dipped slices — thick enough to hold together, thin enough to cook in the two or three minutes the batter needs. Core each ring; the core stays woody.
- The syrupThe syrup — Canned pineapple liquor boiled with sugar thickens quickly. Use roughly half as much sugar as liquid by volume and simmer only until it coats a spoon; taken further it will set hard and sticky as it cools.
- Griddle versionThe second method gives something closer to a pineapple pancake than a fritter. Medium heat, butter the griddle again between batches, and expect the fruit sugars to catch and brown sooner than plain batter would.
- Fresh pineapple and dairyFresh pineapple and dairy — Raw pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that can slacken a milk-and-flour batter if the fruit sits in it. Canning heats the fruit and largely destroys it, so this matters chiefly if you chop fresh pineapple into the batter; either way, mix and cook promptly rather than letting it stand.
- YieldYield — One pineapple or one large can, with the batter above, will serve four to six, the number of fritters depending on how large they are dropped or cut. Serve at once; they soften within minutes.