Pineapple Tarts Recipe

This year's Chinese New Year, I've decided to make my own pineapple tarts instead of buying from the shelf.

As usual, I approached my best friend "Google". Gosh, there was an overwhelming loads of recipes. I (tried) diligently go through as many acclaimed recipes as I could and chose the ones with the most positive feedback to try out. Then I saw a friend posted on facebook on baking pineapple tarts and there were positive comments from her friends on how much they loved hers. Needless to say, I approached her for her secret recipe and she gladly shared it with me!

I tried her recipe and while I loved how the baked pastry "melts in your mouth" but I find the pastry kind of too soft and hence harder to work with for me (following her mixing method, and considering I am working on this project alone!). So I adapted her recipe - modified the flour portion, add in a little corn flour, and "kick out" the egg yolk (another friend told me that she didn't add any egg yolk at all for her tarts except for glazing! How interesting I thought!) So I began experimenting and came up with this adapted version:

Ingredients:
(makes about 100-120 tarts)

• 380g all purpose/ cake flour
  (you can also use 370g of the above and 10g of corn flour for more melty taste)
• 2 tbsp of full cream milk powder
• 250g unsalted SCS butter (do not melt the butter!)
• 55g of icing sugar
• 1/4 tsp vanilla essence/ extract
• Pinch of salt (if using unsalted butter)
• Pineapple jam/ paste

Method:

1. Sift all the flour, milk powder and icing sugar together, add in the salt.
2. Put the block of butter into the flour. Here, I used the rub-in method. However, instead of fingers, I used fork and spoon to break/scrap the butter into smaller bits and coat with flour. Coating with flour will help prevent the butter from melting. (I find that the butter won't melt as fast compared to using fingers.). Do it till they look like bread crumbs. (Add in the vanilla essence during this process.)
   
   The pastry may look a little dry like crumbled biscuits/ bread crumbs. It's alright. When you handle the pastry later, on contact with our hands, the pastry will become softer, dough-like pretty quickly under Singapore's hot, humid weather.
3. Cover the pastry with a damp cloth and leave it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
4. Meanwhile you can start clearing your utensils or roll the pineapple jam into small little balls.
   
   (Can start preheat oven to 160 degree celsius)
    
5. Take out the pastry from the refrigerator and take a small portion, make a ball out of it and flatten it like bowl shaped. Put a ball of pineapple jam/paste at the centre, wrapped around it and roll into ball shape. Put the rolled pineapple tarts onto the baking tray.
6. Once you've filled up a tray, put it into the pre-heated oven of 160 degree celsius, for 15-20 minutes.
7. After 10 minutes, you can take out the tray and do glazing on the pineapple tarts. Once finished glazing, put the tray back into oven and continue baking.
8. When the ready pineapple tarts are removed from oven, let them cool down first before putting them into airtight container. They usually can be kept for up to 3 - 4 weeks (if they are not finished by them  :P).

Notes:

• Am using a Bosch fan-assisted oven with 3D setting.
• It is advisable to experiment with 1/2 recipe first as the result may differ for you due to e.g. different oven brands' settings. Some bakers have used as high as 200 degree celsius to bake but 200 degree celsius in my oven caused my tarts to burnt! Hence you need to experiment with your oven temperature and determine the suitable required time to bake your tarts for optimal result!
• If the pastry becomes too soft to work on, put it back into the refrigerator. If you are working on a large amount of pastry, suggest you take out a portion to work on first and keep the rest of the pastry in the refrigerator.
• You would/ might find that this pastry be a little too soft to work on for open-face pineapple tart. You may try increase the flour portion up to 400g. (I won't suggest anything more than that for a start as I've tried a few times going beyond 400g in my earlier trials but they didn't turn out that satisfactory and I haven't experimented further due to time constraint!)
• All ingredients can be purchased from Phoon Huat in Sungapore except the SCS butter (somehow Phoon Huat dont sell this particular brand of butter).
• For pineapple paste, I go for the one from Ailin Bakery House (location: Tanjong Katong Complex #01-48, 845 Geylang Road, (S)400845; take Exit A, Paya Lebar MRT station circle line).
  
  I have tried both Phoon Huat's premium pineapple paste and Ailin's and Alin's came up being the only favourite among all who eaten both versions of pineapple tarts. It is less sweet and has more fibres like real pineapple (they uses sarawak pineapples from what I've gathered). I personally also like Alin's better (even though it is a little more expensive than Phoon Huat's premium version).