Tiny Timmies: or, Surprisingly subtle use of pineapple

Today on A Book of Cookrye, we are once again trusting recipes from readers! This one comes from Freezy, who has previously given us the delicious Wacky Cake and the disastrous banana "pancakes."

Tiny Timmies 1 small can (8-9 oz) crushed pineapple (preferably canned in syrup, but juice also works) ½ cup butter 1 cup packed light brown sugar (dark works too) 1 egg 2 tsp baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt 2 cups flour 6 oz (1 cup) butterscotch chips 3 oz (¾ cup) walnuts or pecans, crushed Optional candied cherries for a garnish (and if you really wanna make 'em look pineapple upside-downy) Heat oven to 375°. Have greased or lined cookie sheets ready. Drain the pineapple, saving 3 tablespoons of the juice. Mix flour and baking powder, set aside. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg, beat well. After beating the egg into the butter, add the juice (same way you'd add vanilla in another recipe). Then add the flour, beating just until blended. Mix in the chips, pineapple, and nuts last. Drop by the spoonful onto a greased or lined baking sheet. If desired, lightly spritz them with cooking spray and pat them flat. (The cooking spray prevents the dough from sticking to your fingers.) Bake for 10-12 minutes. When they're done, if you're using cherries, top each with a candied cherry when they're hot right from the oven before letting them cool. Source: The Cookie Book by Eva Moore, 1973, via Freezy

To begin with, we start with a small can of crushed pineapple. To my great dismay (and I do mean my great dismay), we found precisely zero store-brand cans of crushed pineapple. I had a serious argument with myself in the canned fruit aisle, asking whether I could morally justify purchasing name-brand pineapple or if I should send the recipe on to someone else.

Freezy wrote to "prepare in the usual fashion," which these days involves using high-wattage motors! (As a bonus, the bowl is microwave-safe, so it doesn't matter that I never remember to soften the butter.)

The recipe begins with the always-delicious union of brown sugar and butter- with the addition of pineapple juice. Upon taste-testing it with an unnecessarily large spoon, The pineapple juice and brown sugar in the resulting mixture tasted a lot like the top of a pineapple upside-down cake. It was a bit saltier than I would have liked, but I figured the rest of the ingredients would dilute the salt until all was happily balanced.

At this point, things take a sharp turn towards Hawaiian! (As a reminder: in the world of processed foods, "Hawaiian" means "contains canned pineapple.") Our cookie dough looked like we went to one of those priced-by-the-pound frozen yogurt places that have topping buffets. You know, the ones where you can cover your (not-quite) ice cream in a mountain of gummy bears, chocolate chips, and crushed M&Ms. 

I should note that while the recipe calls for "walnuts or pecans," I don't believe in walnuts. They always taste rancid, and ruin everything you put them in. (I've heard that they're very good right off the tree, but I don't have one around here to find out.) We used pecans instead. They're more expensive, but which costs more: higher-priced nuts, or throwing out an entire batch of cookies because they taste like walnuts? (Don't forget the cost of running the oven, and also the energy required for the house's air conditioning to counteract the oven heat.)

The dough tasted, of course, absolutely fantastic. I think butterscotch chips are to cookies what cream cheese icing is to cakes. They can fix anything that went wrong. Butterscotch chips will magically solve your failures, up to and possibly including using plaster of Paris instead of flour.

But even if you ignore how butterscotch chips can get you out of all your baking failures, all the things in the cookie dough harmonized very well with each other. I argue that the trick to this recipe's success avoiding walnuts. All this time I thought I hated nuts in cookies, but it turns out I simply hate walnuts. And so, we dropped the walnut-free cookies onto the pan and popped them into the oven.

Although cookies spread a little bit, they mostly stayed in the same plop-like shapes in which they landed on the pan. I expected them to flatten a lot since the dough was so sticky, but you just never know how cookies will behave under fire. I decided to flatten remaining ones a little bit before baking them. A quick spritz of cooking spray on top of the cookies made finger-patting them a quick task. The dough didn't stick to my hands at all.

After the first batch of Tiny Timmies was (barely) cool enough to eat, we sampled them. "It's.... a bit salty." someone politely managed. And contrary to my hopes, the recipe's overgenerous allotment of salt had not been diluted by the flour or the nuts. They're not salty enough to be salted-caramel, but they're definitely saltier than they need to be. (I have adjusted for that in the recipe at the top.)

But the saltiness is a small critique. And if you think I am saying the cookies were ruinously brined, this is how much remained of the first batch before the second one was out of the oven.

 

These cookies were fantastically good. They were just firm enough to be satisfying, but still soft instead of crunchy. The pecans got lightly toasted as the cookies baked, and somehow radiated their flavor throughout the dough. However, I should note that you need to put these into well-sealed containers. Some cookies stay good if you leave them out on a plate for a day or two, but Tiny Timmies do not. Also, you will have a lot of Tiny Timmies.

As an amusing postscript, one person who had already eaten more than a good-sized handful of these looked down with surprise at the cookie in his hand and said "Wait, is that pineapple?" So, this is the second time we can use the phrase "subtle use of pineapple" when describing a recipe.