Short And Sweet. Gingersnap Crumble Ice Cream Tart With Pineapple Caramel Sauce.

Not a ginger roundabout, but a Blondie one.

Spicy gingersnaps, creamy vanilla ice cream and pineapple in caramel share the plate in this super easy dessert.

You can simplify things, too, by just serving some fresh fruit alongside the tart. Also, it is a good idea to pre-slice the tart before freezing as the crust gets very hard and can be difficult to cut when frozen.

Gingersnap Crumble Ice Cream Tart With Pineapple Caramel Sauce

Ingredients:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
4 cups coarsely broken gingersnaps
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 pints good quality vanilla ice cream (I love Brigham’s)
Caramel Pineapple Sauce (recipe follows)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. In a food processor grind gingersnaps to fine crumbs and add butter and sugar, pulsing until blended.

3. Sprinkle 1 cup of the crumb mixture over bottom of a 10- by 1-inch round fluted tart pan with a removable bottom and press to cover. Sprinkle 1/2 cup crumb mixture around edge of pan and with your fingers press up side of pan. Carefully line shell with non-stick foil, folding over edge to cover crumbs completely, and add pie weights or raw rice. Sprinkle remaining crumb mixture in a shallow baking pan.

4. Bake crumb mixture in lower third of oven 12 minutes and bake shell in upper third 20 minutes.

5. Cool crumb mixture in baking pan on a rack and, when crumbs are cool enough to handle, with your fingers break up any large clumps.

6. Cool shell in foil in tart pan on another rack 15 minutes. Carefully remove foil and weights and cool shell completely (shell may be soft in center but will firm as it cools).

7. Soften ice cream slightly and fold in half of cooled, baked crumb mixture.

8. Spoon ice-cream mixture into shell, smoothing top, and sprinkle with remaining crumb mixture.

9. Freeze tart until ice cream is firm, about 2 hours. Tart keeps, frozen and loosely covered, 3 days.

10. Serve tart with sauce.

Serves 8

Caramel Pineapple Sauce

Ingredients:

1 ripe pineapple
1/2 cup sugar

Directions:

1. Cut rind from pineapple and quarter pineapple lengthwise. Cut off core and cut pineapple quarters crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices.

2. In a dry, heavy saucepan cook sugar over moderately low heat, stirring slowly to help sugar melt evenly, until melted and pale golden.

3. Cook caramel, without stirring until golden. This takes only 2 to 3 minutes.

4. Remove pan from heat and add pineapple (mixture will vigorously bubble and caramel will harden). Simmer mixture, stirring, 5 minutes, or until caramel is dissolved.

5. Cool sauce to room temperature. Chill sauce, covered, at least 2 hours and up to 5 days.

Recipes from Gourmet Magazine