Happy Lunar New Year!

Pineapple tarts are officially my favourite Lunar New Year goodie this year!

Finally! After 1.8 kg of pineapple filling, 1.5 kg of plain flour, 11 egg yolks, 200g icing sugar, 8 tablespoonfuls of corn flour and 8 hours of kneading, rolling, shaping and baking (with the help of X), I finally finished making 28264 pineapple tarts! (: (:

Okay no I’m just kidding, I’ve made about 250+ pineapple tarts and am going to give more than half of them away to close friends and relatives. (:

I think I’ve perfected the tart crust, as it is exactly how I’d like my pineapple tarts to be. The tarts are melt-in-the-mouth – but not too much that the crust “melted” before you chew on the pineapple jam – it’s kind of hard to describe… but I guess you’ll have to try to find out d: I also like the ratio of 10g tart : 6g pineapple filling. Too little filing and I’ll find I’m just eating the crust, too much filling will yield an overly sweet pineapple tart. The ratio is just perfect for me and the size of the tarts allow one to simply pop them right into the mouth – that’s right, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past one day – popping the pineapple tarts into my mouth non-stop! I hope I can still find my waist after this festive season!

Most of the tarts are going to be given away to close friends and relatives, I hope they will like the tarts! (:

As I made my pineapple tarts in 2 batches, I played around with different brands of butter and vanilla essence. To one batch I added rum while to the other I added vanilla extract. The one with rum didn’t have any hint of rum at all (probably because it’s pure rum, not extract), while I can really taste the vanilla in the ones with the vanilla extract. After tasting, I think I will omit the vanilla or reduce the amount used next time. It’s not that it’s not good… but it tastes better without the vanilla in my opinion. Of course, taste and preference varies from individual to individual. (:

For the butter, good quality (or best) butter must, must, must, must, must be used. How do I determine the quality? By the price! The more expensive the butter, the better it should be. SCS butter is a good choice – with minimum 82% milk fat in the butter, it will guarantee your tarts to be rich, buttery and sinfully awesome. The only thing that I do not really like is the strong milky residual taste left in my mouth after I finish the pineapple tarts. I think I’ll try it (probably next year…) again with other brands of butter and hopefully I can find one that I’ll 120% like (:

I’ll attempt to make my own pineapple jam the next year (if I can) as I find that both of the pineapple jam brands that I bought are still too sweet, though X finds it okay. Well, I can’t wait to go back to my home town and let my relatives try my pineapple tarts. I do hope they’ll like it as much as I do! The recipe of the pineapple tarts can be found here (aka in my previous post), and I wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year!

Here’s wishing everyone a prosperous Lunar New Year! (: