Pineapple tarts are a festive favorite during Chinese New Year, because these bite-sized treats are addictive! No one stops at one. The significance of these sweet morsels comes from the Chinese word for pineapple. In various Chinese dialects, pineapple is known as “wong/ong lai” and the vowel “wong/ong” sounds just like the Chinese word for “prosperity” and “lai” means “come”, so together “wong/ong lai” symbolises an abundance of prosperity and thus pineapple is a common Chinese New Year motif.
Pineapple tarts come in a few different shapes, sometimes open-faced with a ball of pineapple jam in the middle, or pillow-shaped with a log of pineapple jam tucked inside, or round balls like the ones I’m making. Regardless of shape, the one thing they have in common is the pairing of crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth pastry and fragrant pineapple jam.
Even though there is ready-made store-bought pineapple jam available, I choose to make my own pineapple jam so that I can control the amount of sugar in it. Also I love the sweet smell of fresh pineapple wafting throughout my kitchen when I prepare the jam, it’s very uplifting – one of my fave scents!
Homemade Pineapple Jam
Yields about 500g
2 Pineapples
300g Sugar
1 Tbs Lemon Juice
Optional Spice Pack
2 pcs Cinnamon
2 pcs Star Anise
8-10 pcs Cloves
1. Peel pineapples and cut into chunks.
2. Blitz in food processor until finely shredded, then transfer into a sieve over a bowl to drain the juice. The resulting pineapple juice can be kept and drunk separately as fruit juice.
3. Cook remaining pineapple pulp in a pan over medium heat for 10 minutes, then lower the heat.
4. Add sugar and spice pack. Stir occasionally to allow the flavours to incorporate.
5. Add lemon juice. Continue stirring until the pineapple mixture has lost most of the moisture.
6. Transfer to a bowl, remove spice pack, and allow to cool completely before storing in refrigerator.
Now let’s make some Pineapple Tarts!
Pineapple Tarts
Yields about 90 tarts
250g Unsalted Butter, cubed
50g Icing Sugar
2 Egg Yolks
1 Whole Egg (Yolk + White)
350g Flour
50g Milk Powder
50g Finely Grated Parmesan Cheese
500g Homemade Pineapple Jam
Egg Wash (1 Egg + 1 Tbs Water)
1. Sieve the flour, milk powder and cheese powder in a large mixing bowl and set aside.
2. Using a mixer with paddle attachment, cream cubed butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Slowly add in the egg yolks, one at a time, and then the white.
4. Cream until the eggs are combined into the butter-sugar mixture.
5. Add in sieved flour-milk-cheese mixture in 3 separate batches, and continue to mix until the dry ingredients are just incorporated (do not overmix).
6. Shape dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and cool in refrigerator for 15 minutes.
7. Roll pineapple jam into balls of 8g each and wrap each with 12g of dough. Roll into a ball and and place on a lined baking tray.
8. Prepare egg wash by mixing egg and water, then brush over the tarts.
9. Preheat oven at 180 degrees Celsius. Bake for 15 mins or until golden brown. Cool tarts before storing in air tight container.
While editing these pictures, my memory was jogged back to 2008 when one hot summer day in NYC, I came across fresh pineapples at the supermarket and was inspired to make some pineapple tarts (even though it was not Chinese New Year at the time; it was early July!). That was my first time making pineapple tarts and I used a random recipe I found online. Compared to the recipe above, it is much simpler and less ingredients are required. Flavour- and texture-wise though, I am happier with the recipe as listed in this blog post. The addition of milk powder and grated parmesan cheese gives additional flavour dimension to the dough, while the texture is solid and sturdy when held in your hands but melt-in-your-mouth crumbly when you bite into it. In other words, 2020-Recipe is definitely a delicious upgrade from 2008-Recipe.
Let me share my 2008 pictures here since they were never published on my blog before. *Turning on time machine*
Now that I’m viewing these photos again, I realized what a noob I was. Because I used the dough recipe for vol au vent aka puff pastry. Oops!
Anyway, *zooming back to present day 2020*…
It is evident in the recent batch of pineapple tarts I made that the crust is crumbly and this is the way traditional pineapple tarts should be. During CNY break, it’s great to snack on them throughout the day (alternating between pineapple tarts and bak kwa, both homemade!). Another CNY recipe to make: Hakka Suan Pan Zi Abacus Seeds.
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