Featured Snack Failure: Pineapple Cream Cheese Icing
I’ve had a major food disappointment. When this Just Pineapple Powder (freeze-dried pineapples crushed into a powder with nothing added!) arrived for me from Just Tomatoes last week, the first thing that popped into my mind was pineapple cream cheese icing and how amazing it would taste slathered on a hunk of carrot cake. I never got around to making the carrot cake, but the icing simply could not wait. I followed my own instructions for healthy cream cheese icing and then mixed half the packet of this powder into it. It tasted fine in the moment — not as pineappley as I would have liked but nothing I would turn my nose up at. I packed a cup of it and planned to use it as a dip for my apple slices at work the next day.
When the appointed time arrived at work, I went to the fridge and excitedly lifted out what was going to be the best snack of the year. I could tell something was wrong immediately. Before I even opened the container, I could see that my icing had turned to complete liquid. I opened it to take a taste and nearly gagged as I was hit with overwhelming bitterness, not unlike my mom’s unfortunate pineapple-ricotta pie experiment last Hanukkah that I ended up repurposing into this. I should have known no good would come from the pineapple-ricotta pairing! Now my pineapple powder is gone, but if I had more, I would try mixing it with straight cream cheese. I have a feeling that would be more successful.
Anyway, all was not lost because I obviously had to find a way to re-use the pineapple cream cheese icing nastiness. I’ll save that story for another day.
With the other half of the pineapple powder packet, I had more success. I’ve already mentioned the pineapple-coconut- ginger peanut butter I made in some previous posts, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out. I don’t remember exactly how I did it, but I know that the process involved my coffee bean grinder, my immersion blender, some heat treatment, lots of taste-testing, and these:
(side note: I had a bite of this Peeled pineapple before I chopped the rest for the peanut butter and, ohhhhh my goodness, it was amazing. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to find unsweetened dried pineapple. It’s SO sweet on its own without anything else added.)
At first, I didn’t think the peanut butter was pineappley enough, but that may have been because I’d been taste-testing it all afternoon and had become immune to the flavor. In subsequent days, however, I have not noticed this problem. In fact, I can’t stop taking little tastes because the flavor of each ingredient comes through so deliciously!
In conclusion, I wish I had more Just Pineapple Powder. It has so much potential, but I have not been able to tap it fully yet. (And be cautious when mixing with yogurt and/or ricotta!)
Featured Contributions: Wednesday
Well, you know what I had for breakfast, you know what I had for lunch, and you know that at least one of my snacks involved a variation on an item mentioned above. All that’s left to address is the contributions!
Fresh coconut from Jessica:
I actually took a smaller piece to eat and brought this bigger one (about 2 inches by 2 inches) home for a special project that is underway as I write.
Small forkful of spicy shredded chicken from Mildred’s taco. It was too hot for her but perfect for me:
Trouble from Nydia involving between 1/4 – 1/2 cup of mixed nuts (especially brazil nuts and hazelnuts, yummmm!) and approximately seven yogurt-covered pretzels:
I decided that the nuts and pretzels were going to count as my dinner. Oh, and then I heard that there were leftovers from a belated cinco de mayo party in the Parent & Me group downstairs, so these slices (yes, plural) of coconut cake roll also became dinner:
And this piece of pecan doughnut from the famous Doughnut Plant also became dinner on the drive home when Pura passed it up to Mildred and Mildred shared with me:
(You’d have to be pretty thick in the head to turn down a Doughnut Plant doughnut. If you ever have a chance, you MUST try their tres leches doughnut. No words.)
There was also a GIANT mango from Myrna to thank me for proofreading her paper (next to 1/2 cup for perspective):
I did not eat it tonight, but I diced it and gnawed all the extra flesh off of the skin as I did so!
Have you had any snack failures recently? Where you able to rescue them?
Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition 
Too bad about your pineapple icing. At least the PB worked out. I haven’t really had any snack failures lately. I generally don’t take the time to make anything creative enough that it can fail.
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sorry about that major failure, but at least you found another use for it.
Can’t remember any major failure recently, maybe that’s a indicator that I haven’t been very adventurous. 🙂
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Unfortunately, not all of my dehydrator antics have been stories of deliciousness. I attempted some corn/red pepper/red onion/cilantro crackers on Monday. FAIL. I was trying to recall the recipe from memory becauase I was too lazy to grab my laptop. I forgot the flax meal. Yeah, so apparently crackers need flax meal. Duh.
I wasn’t able to re-purpose the failed crackers. I tried to think of what I could possibly do with the rubbery mess, but was at a loss. Looking back, I should have re-hydrated the scrappy crackers and made a sauce or soup. I’m still learning about this whole re-purposing thing…be patient. =)
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mmmm….tres leches donut sounds so good.
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Love all the peeled snacks, especially the pineapples. They are definitely the best dried fruit I’ve ever had.
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I just realized I can’t remember the last time I had Brazil nuts. They’re so good! You should attempt to make brazil nut butter, it’d probably be delicious 🙂
I’m still planning on making that sunflower seed butter, just haven’t gotten around to it yet!
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I love dried pineapple too, but have only found it unsweetened at one place. I don’t understand why this is so difficult. Dried fruit is already sweet!
The PB and pineapple sounds pretty amazing. I know what you mean about taste testing though. I lose all sense of taste after a while.
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Sorry about that snack failure. It sucks to be excited about something only to be majorly let down!!!
That PB you made sounds awesome, though!
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haha…i tried “soaking” my oats in Cottage cheese overnight- SICK, horrible call!!! I took a pic but couldn’t even post about the disaster 😀 It was just a dry clump of oats at the bottom of the bowl, i am so not wasteful at all but i just tossed the whole thing hoping it didn’t happen!
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I like the way you think! Sorry the icing didn’t work out – can’t wait to see what sort of magic you worked on it though 😀
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Snack failures are so sad. I’m disappointed for you that icing didn’t work out because that’s particularly sad. If a salad doesn’t work out, too bad. But if icing doesn’t work out – tragic! The devastation is palpable…
I’m a big fan of blended oats and I once blended spinach and cocoa powder together in my oats. Huge fails. Chocolate + spinach = enemies. They did not get on in that bowl. Not too mention that I was effectively eating something that resembled poo with green bits poking out. Never again.
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sorry about the failed icing 😦
I haven’t had any big snack mishaps (yet) but I’m sure as my sanity diminishes this semester, it will happen 🙂
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That’s too bad the icing did not turn out as planned- especially the idea sounds really good!
Nice looking dinner- hehehe
Snack failures? Hmmmm. I don’t think so. I mean I haven’t had spectactular snacks all of the time but nothing horrible comes to mind.
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I read this article by Mark Bittman in the NY Times and I thought of you – The article is all about freezing leftovers and reducing waste 🙂
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Tres leches donut sounds AMAZING.
I can’t think of a snack FAIL, but I had a breakfast fail this morning. We just got back into our condo after it was tented, and so we’re pretty much out of fresh food. I knew I had yogurt, almond butter, and cinnamon Puffins so I was going to make breakfast out of that. Well this morning I realized that we didn’t seal up all our food properly so the termite guys THREW OUT my almond butter and my greek yogurt from Trader Joe’s (along with a bunch of other food too).
Seriously, I almost cried and then I had two packets of Whole Foods brand instant oatmeal for breakfast instead. It’s tasty, but SO not what I wanted this morning. FAIL!!
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*swoons at the thought of a tres leches donut*
That.sounds.amazing.
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Uh oh sorry about the pineapple icing failure. It sounds delicious in theory too bad it didn’t work!
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Oh my yes. I was overwhelmed by the rave reviews for the green smooties in blogland and made one myself this weekend. I added strawberries and spinach to yogurt and blended it all up. The end was a pretty bland tasting drink that had no hints of strawberry whatsoever. I also couldn’t couldn’t stomach the pink and green tone that the smoothie took on.
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fyi – Trader Joes makes fantastic unsweetened dried pineapple.
p.s. have you looked at either of the books yet?
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Okay that PB looks outa control increddddibleness status!! Pineapple is my all time favorite fruit and I love the p-napple happening all ova this post!
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LOL pineapple contains enzymes that can hydrolyze proteins — hence LIQUIFICATION of yogurt or cream cheese (even tenderizes MEAT)! Maybe an icing fail but the up-side? You unwittingly demonstrated the proteolytic power of pineapple in your own kitchen. 🙂
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