These melt-in-your-mouth pineapple tarts are the perfect cookies for Chinese New Year! It is especially significant for the Chinese as the pronunciation of the Chinese characters of pineapple in Hokkien is “ong lai”, which sounds similar to “prosperity coming your way”.
For the pineapple tarts, our emphasis is on the pastry. You can buy the pineapple jam filling from any bakery-ingredient stores but if you would like to make your own, we have also included instructions, but because it takes around 1 to 1.5 hours to make, it is advisable to purchase from outside if you find it a tedious endeavour.
The pastry is made with few ingredients, namely plain flour (you can also use all-purpose or cookie flour), butter, milk powder, icing sugar, egg yolk and salt. The outcome is a pastry that is light, crumbly and melt in your mouth. The milk powder gives the pastry a delicate milky aroma, which blends in perfectly with the pineapple filling. The recipe can be easily doubled or tripled if you want to make more pineapple tarts in one go.
It may take extra effort to make these tarts yourself, but the results are very satisfying! Once you made them yourselves, you would definitely want to make them every festive celebration!
Ingredients
| 300 g | pineapple jam filling (store bought or homemade) | |
|---|---|---|
Pastry | ||
| 100 g | butter, diced and softened at room temperature | |
| 1 | QL Deli Fresh egg yolk | |
| ½ tsp | vanilla essence/extract (optional) | |
| 15 g | icing sugar | |
| Pinch of salt | ||
| 150 g | plain or all purpose or cookie flour | |
| 10 g | milk powder (skimmed or full cream) | |
Egg wash (mix well): | ||
| 1 | QL Deli Fresh egg yolk | |
| 1 tbsp | milk | |
Pineapple jam filling: | ||
| 1 | ripe pineapple (skin and core removed, cut into smaller pieces) | |
| 150 g | fine granulated or caster sugar | |
| 2 | cloves | |
| 2 inch | cinnamon, broken | |
Method
- Line a baking tray with parchment paper or grease with butter.
- Cream butter and egg yolk with an electric mixer until well combined.
- Beat in sugar, salt and vanilla essence/extract (if using), mix well.
- Add in flour and milk powder, use a wooden or rubber spatula to bring the mixture together.
- Knead the mixture into a dough with your hand until the dough does not stick to your hand. Leave the dough aside and rest for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, shape the pineapple jam filling into 10 g balls. You can do this in advance and keep them in the fridge.
- After resting the dough for 30 minutes, shape them into 10 g balls.
- Flatten a dough ball with your palm and put a pineapple jam filling ball on the dough.
- Seal up the filling with the pastry and use your fingers to shape into a pointed oval ball.
- With a pair of sharp pointed scissors, cut the top surface of the pastry to form pineapple-shaped tarts.
- Repeat with the rest of the pastry and filling. You can also use a pineapple tart cookie cutter to make the base and top with pineapple filling on top.
- Brush pineapple tarts with egg wash and bake in a preheated 180 C oven for 25 – 35 minutes or until golden brown.
- Leave aside to cool. Store in an airtight container. Be careful when putting the tarts into the container as the pastry is rather crumbly. They can be kept for 2 – 3 weeks in the air tight container.
- To make pineapple filling, use a food processor to grind the pineapple, cook on low heat with cinnamon and cloves, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens and liquid dries up. Add in sugar and stir until melted and well combined with the pineapple filling. Dish out and leave aside to cool.
QL Omega & QL Deli Fresh eggs are available at major hypermarkets and supermarkets. For more information on QL Eggs, click here.
