Hi Folks,

Guess what?! Chinese New Year is almost here! And that means… lots and lots and lots of baking for me! Sorry I know I haven’t been updating my blog as much as I had before. Can’t help feeling guilty about that. Eeks… I must say, work, yoga, and social life pretty much sums up my entire calendar! Oh yes, and Candy Crush. 😥

Anyway! It’s prime baking season here in Singapore! Each and every year I bake a batch of pineapple tarts without fail. This year would of course not be an exception! You may also see my old recipe from 2 years ago here:

I must warn you first, these can be quite time consuming. The amount of time, however, can be halved if you have some assistance in the kitchen. First, there’s the grating of the pineapple, then comes the cooking, then making the dough, and…. the wrapping! I’d say the wrapping probably takes the longest. So yes, please grab a chair and play some music while you’re at it. Sometimes I even manage to watch an entire film while wrapping.

I came up with this recipe after experimenting with many others. If you’re a fan of the super crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth texture, this is the recipe for you!

Pineapple Tarts

by Sweet Samsations. Makes 40-50 pineapple tarts

Pineapple Filling

• 2 Pineapples
• 1  1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

1. Firstly, grate your pineapple. You will notice that you get quite a bit of juice with the grated remains of your pineapple.
2. Cook the grated pineapple in its juice at approximately 120 degrees. Throw in all the other ingredients. The cooking will require a fair bit of patience as the entire process will take at least half an hour… maybe more. If you want to hasten this process you may strain the juice before cooking the pineapple. Naturally however, this would adversely affect the taste of your final product.
3. Once your pineapple has turned dark brown and almost all the juice has been cooked, turn the heat off and leave it to cool. Be careful not to overcook and burn your filling or you’ll have to repeat the entire process again!
4. When the filling has been completely cooled, roll them into little balls.

Dough

• 350g butter (cold, and chopped into small pieces)
• 1 whole egg
• 1 yolk
• 3 tbsp icing sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 3 tbsp milk powder (Make sure you don’t omit this!)
• 3 3/4 cups cake flour

1.  Cream the butter until it turns pale white.
2. Add the egg and yolk to the creamed batter and beat until they are mixed well.
3. Add icing sugar and milk powder and continue to beat thoroughly.
4. Add in flour by beating at a low speed. You can set your Kitchen Aid to the lowest speed now.
5. Once the mixture has fully come together, remove the dough. If your dough is still very sticky and hard to handle, you will need to add more flour.

You can now start making your pineapple tarts!

Wrapping and Egg Wash

• 1 egg yolk

1. Take a small amount of dough, flatten it out and enclose the filling in the middle. Your ball should be smooth. Any cracks in the dough will later result in cracks after they have been baked.
2. The simplest pineapple tarts are just rolled (as you can see from the above 1st picture). However, if you may like to also experiment with other designs as the below portrays.
3. Using a clean pair of scissors, make incisions in the rolled dough.
4. Alas! You have now finished rolling your pineapple tarts… To give them a nice glossy finish, brush with egg wash. I like to only use yolk for my egg wash.
5. Bake at 160 degrees for 12-15 minutes. Your tarts will turn to a beautiful brown from the egg wash.
6. Leave the cookies to cool as it will be super duper crumbly at this moment!

For a picture reference to the steps, here’s a picture! 🙂

Follow me on my Instagram! @chocosammiee

So folks! I hope you’ll enjoy making this recipe! It may be a lot of work, but trust me, these delicious tarts are worth every effort! Happy New Year of the Horse! 馬到成功!