Pineapple Tarts

As the CNY is drawing closer, the baking gets frenzier. Thought I will burn out my oven! My CNY cookout item five is Pineapple Tarts.
Pineapple Tarts is a must-have item for the CNY and I'm sure every family would either bake some or buy some for the CNY.
Why is this tart a must-have?
Let me tell you why!
Pineapple in Hokkien dialect is read as "Ong Lai" and literally written in the auspicious way in Chinese characaters as "旺來" which means "Good Luck Coming Our Way". Who wouldn't welcome this "Ong Lai" then?
Me, certainly will bake this "Ong Lai Tarts" as I want more "旺來" coming my way!
Bake more "Ong Lai Tarts" and you'll will get more "Ong Lai"! Good Luck then!





Below are photos of the herbs which I used to make the pineapple filling. These herbs enhanced the flavour of the filling but you can omit them if you find it too tedious to search for them.

Cinnamon stick (Photo courtesy: www.tis-gdv.de)


Cloves (Photo courtesy: www.tis-gdv.de)


Star anise (Photo courtesy: www.tis-gdv.de)


Ingredients: (85 pieces)
Pastry
Plain Flour 340g
2 tbsp Icing sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Cold butter 200g
1 Egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence or brandy
5 tsp ice cold water
1/2 tsp baking powder

Egg glace: Lightly beat1 yolk with 1 tsp water

Method:
1. Lightly beat egg yolk with vanilla essence.
2. Sieve flour, baking powder and icing sugar into mixing bowl. Stir in salt and blend well.
3. Put all butter into flour mixture and cut up butter into small pieces with a knife in the flour.
4. Use rubbing-in method to rub in butter into the flour until it is bread crumbs like.
5. Add egg yolk and ice water into flour and use a fork to blend well to form a dough.
6. Put dough into freezer bag and refrigerate for 1 hour. (Not in the ice-box)
7. Remove dough from fridge and use a rolling pin to roll out dough into 7 mm thick and use tart cutter to cut out the dough. Place tart onto baking tray lined with baking sheet.
8. Bake at 200C for 10 minutes, remove from oven, apply egg wash and lightly press the pineapple filling onto the indentations of the tarts. Bake again at 180C for 10 – 15 minutes or until the golden colour that you desired.


Pineapple Filling
2 kg pineapple
500g white sugar (or adjust to suit your taste)
1 tbsp lemon/lime juice
1 tbsp butter
1 piece 6cm cinnamon
8 cloves
1 - 2 star anise
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

Method:
1. Remove skin off the pineapple and gouge out the black eyes with a sharp knife.
2. Shred pineeapple into a large bowl.
3. Strain off half of the juice.
4. Put the shredded pineapple, sugar, butter and lemon/lime juice into a saucepan and cook till jam is thick and on the dry side, this takes about 45 - 60 minutes.
5. Adjust the sugar to taste, if the jam is too dry, you can add in some of the pineapple juice you save up in step (3) until you get the right consistency.
6. Cool the filling before storing.

Notes:
Omit the cinnamon powder in the pineapple filling if you want the filling to be golden colour. I added the cinnamon powder to ehanced the flavour and the side effect is darker filling instead of the nice golden colour.