Five-Spice Sweet Potato Ice Cream with Pineapple

This is one of my entries into the Sweet Potato Recipe Contest; it didn't take long at all to throw together since I used leftover sweet potatoes and pineapple, but if you were making it from scratch, you can used canned crushed pineapple for a shortcut!

Makes 1 pint of ice cream

• 1/2 large sweet potato (or 1/2 cup mashed cooked sweet potatoes)
• 1 cup coconut cream (if you use coconut milk, the texture will be icier and less creamy)
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 3 Tbs dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp Chinese Five-Spice powder
• 1/4 tsp ground red chile powder (pure chile powder! or flakes)
• 1 Tbs. fresh grated ginger, finely minced candied ginger, or 1/2 tsp dried ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground caradmom
• 1/4 cup finely chopped or crushed pineapple (does not need to be drained, but should be mostly fruit)
• 1 Tbs. dark rum (optional but helps keep it from freezing too solid)

For the sweet potatoes, you can either boil or steam and mash them, or roast them first and then mash them. I think roasting them first yields a better (smoother) texture, but they do have to be fully cooked. Also, if you're using fresh pineapple, roast the chunks first for deeper, sweeter flavor! (Roast sweet potatoes chunks tossed with a tiny bit of olive or sesame oil at 450 degrees for 20-30 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the edges start to brown--time needed will depend on the size of your chunks; roast pineapple chunks at 450 degrees for 10-15 minutes, turning once, until they start to caramelize/brown slightly).

Puree all ingredients (except pineapple) together in a blender until smooth. Stir in pineapple and prepare in an ice cream maker per directions. Alternately, you can pour the mixture into a shallow dish and freeze, stirring with a fork every 20-30 minutes until completely frozen.