Crysallised Pineapple

This is quite frankly ridiculous! But I enjoy doing it as one of the rituals of Christmas.

Ingredients
a pineapple
sugar
water

Equipment

knife and board for preparing fruit
saucepan
sieve
bowl
drying rack

preparation time:
prepare fruit
various times you make syrup
process for ten days
dry: several days

Cooking process

Day 1: You need a real pineapple, not tinned or otherwise processed. Cut off the top, bottom and skin. This is rather a messy process, as there are regular small bits sticking into the flesh of the pineapple. You can always remove them later on once crystalised. Slice the pineapple flesh into thick slices, then into wedges. There is a harder bit in the middle of the pineapple which you can remove if you want, but I tend to leave it.
Put water and of sugar in the saucepan, and heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved to make a syrup.
Put the pineapple in the saucepan with the syrup and bring to the boil.
Put the hot syrup and pineapple in the bowl. Leave it for a day.
Day 2: Drain the syrup into the saucepan, leaving the peel in the bowl. Add sugar to the syrup, and heat and stir until dissolved. Pour back onto the pineapple in the bowl and leave it for a day.
Day 3: Drain the syrup into the saucepan, leaving the peel in the bowl. Add sugar to the syrup, and heat and stir until dissolved. Pour back onto the pineapple in the bowl and leave it for a day.
Day 4: Drain the syrup into the saucepan, leaving the peel in the bowl. Add sugar to the syrup, and heat and stir until dissolved. Pour back onto the pineapple in the bowl and leave it for a day.
Day 5: Drain the syrup into the saucepan, leaving the peel in the bowl. Add sugar to the syrup, and heat and stir until dissolved. Add the pineapple to the syrup in the saucepan and bring to the boil. Put pineapple and syrup back into the bowl and leave it for two days.
Day 7: Drain the syrup into the saucepan, leaving the peel in the bowl. Add sugar to the syrup, and heat and stir until dissolved. Add the pineapple to the syrup in the saucepan and bring to the boil. Put pineapple and syrup back into the bowl and leave it for three days.
Day 10: Drain off the syrup (which can be used elsewhere), and keep the pineapple in a sieve over a bowl for a day until it stops dripping syrup. Then lay the pineapple out on a rack, turning from time to time, until no longer sticky. This takes several days. A warm place will obviously help the drying process.
If dried properly, the pineapple will keep, but shouldn't be put in an air-tight container.

Other ideas

Don't throw the syrup away. You can make with it, or pour it over ice cream.
My local supermarket does fresh pineapple with the skin cut off, either as rings or sticks - very useful!
You can use other fruit, but pineapple is very effective. I have also tried this with oranges. I boiled the whole oranges to soften them first, perhaps for half an hour. Then I slice them, then proceed with the crystallisation process. You would have thought that all the juice would disappear and you just get the stringy bits and the rind. You do, a bit. It is really a more sophisticated version of candied peel. But some of the juicy centre of the orange does survive. Use the end slices (which are all peel) as candied peel, and the middle slices as crystallised fruit.

Crysallised orange slices