Recipe: Chinese New Year - My Little Pineapple Tarts

By far my favourite thing to do for Chinese New Year is to bake pineapple tarts. The reason I like this is just because home-made tarts are the best. Also, to stamp out the tarts kind of neccesitates sitting around the kitchen table for a fair period of time, which is great for bonding.

The recipe for this is actually very simple. You have to make the pastry dough first because it has to chill overnight. I advise making the recipe for the dough and the jam in batches, so that you don't burn out trying to do everything. This recipe is courtesy of my Peranakan aunts, who make flawless home-made New Year goodies.

Pineapple Tart Dough
1 kg plain flour
4 eggs (4 egg yolks and 1 egg white), beaten lightly
2 1/4 250g pieces of butter (unsalted)
pinch of salt
juice of 1 lime
1 1/2 tbsp ice cold water

Rub in the butter and flour, make a well and mix in the eggs. Mix in the cold water and lime juice. Split into four balls and drop into seperate plastic bags. Refrigerate overnight, then take out of refrigeration for 3-4 hours before using.

The lime juice and overnight refrigeration are neccesary for a dough that crumbles in your mouth but remains firm. When baking, brush some egg yolk over the exposed parts of the tart.

Pineapple Jam
6 pineapples
Sugar
Cinnamon
Cloves

The jam is an easy if tedious recipe. Get your fruit seller to slice the skins off the pineapple and choose dark yellow, sweet pineapples with a good nuanced flavour. Chop up the 6 pineapples by hand- blitzing them will cut all the fibres, producing a jam that doesn't taste home-made because the jam has no body or structure and falls to pieces when tasted. Mash up the remnants and chase all the juice and the pinapple from your chopping board into a pot.

(I have found, as a cheat... that you can blend a third of the pineapples and chop up the rest, without losing the sticky, solid goodness of home-made jam)

Use about half the amount of sugar to pineapple (measure with the same bowls you used for the pineapple). I generally put Less than half and that works out for slightly not-so-sweet tarts. Throw in the cinnamon and cloves, about 4 or 5 cinnamon sticks in each pot and a handful of cloves in each.

Boil on high heat till all the pineapple jam warms through and then lower to a simmer for a couple of hours. You will know when the jam is done, because it changes colour slightly as the sugar caramelizes, the jam turns from a light or medium yellow to an almost orangey colour. Also, it becomes thicker and the juice starts to evapourate and the cinnamon sticks unfurl. You can cool and refrigerate the jam overnight, or else just wait for it to cool sufficiently.

When making the jam, be careful that the sugar has not all sunk to the bottom of the bowl and started to burn. You need to stir it throughly for the first half hour to distribute the heat.

To assemble, just take your cookie stampers and stamp out the tarts and line them up on the silpat. Then roll large and generous balls of jam and sit them in the center of the tarts, flattening the tops slightly. Remove the cloves from the jam when you come across them and decorate the tops of the tarts if you like with some spare dough strips or cloves.

Bake in the over for 20 min at 140C. Don't overbake them as the dough will get dry. If you need to, you can lower the temperature and move the tray up toward the fan to dry out the jam. These are heavenly when warm and just out of the oven! I brought a freshly-baked tray out to dinner and it's amazing how quickly them little fingers move to grab the tarts!

You can also cool them, stack them and store them in prefably air-tight containers between greaseproof paper as they dent more easily then the harder store-bought tarts.