Melt-in-your-mouth Pineapple Tarts Recipe

For 100 pineapple tarts

Ingredients for Pineapple Paste

1. 4 Ripe Pineapples

2. 300 grams of sugar
3. 1 Cinnamon
4. 5 Star Anise

Ingredients for Pastry Dough

1. 400g Self-Rising Flour 

2. 250g SCS Butter

3. 2 egg yolk

4. 1 tea spoon vanilla essence

Ingredients for Egg Wash

1. 1 Egg

2. Dash of milk

Utensils
1. Grater
2. Sieve
3. Cooking Pot
4. Baking scale
5. Egg wash brush
6. Plastic Wrap

We started with the pineapple paste which takes a longer time. We spent about 2 hours preparing it and 1 hour to let it cool.
Preparing the pineapple paste:
1. Peel the pineapple and grate the flesh.
Please be very careful with the grater!! We chose to use a grater not too fine so we have some pineapple fibre.
2. Sieve the pineapple juice out. The drier the better! Keep the juice! You can use for it later.
3. Put it in the pot over the fire, add 1 cinnamon, 5 star anise and 300g of sugar (or add to taste)
4. Turn on medium fire, stir jam till its dry. This would take about 30 minutes.
5. Keep stirring so the pineapple jam doesn't turn black!
6. Cook until the mixture is dark yellowish brown and thickened. This would take about 45 minutes.
Preparing the pastry dough:
Pre-set oven at 175 degree for about 10 minutes.
After trial and error for 3 days, I find it best to knead with my hands.
I do my pastry dough on a big tray. You can also set a piece of plastic on the table and do it.

1. Sieve flour
2. Add in 250g of butter. Knead the butter into the flour till it looks like bread crumbs. It looks dry but it is normal.
3. Add in 2 egg yolks and continue kneading it in evenly.
4. 1 teaspoon of vanilla.
We are ready to make the pineapple tarts!!
By now, you will feel that the texture is soft and buttery. And the pasty dough is ready! This is the best mixture of all I've tried, got it right with the help of a friend's mother who loves her pastry melty too!

I take a small portion of the dough and work on them first. Keeping the rest under wraps, they do harden if they are exposed to air for too long. Note that the dough would be too soft to so sunny-side ups. So they are best shaped round or rectangular. Which I tried them both above!

I take a small dough, about the size of a 50 cents coin, flatten it and add in the pineapple. Roll them up and try to keep the pineapple within the small dough as best as I can. I always thought that it is easier and faster to do pineapple tart balls, but it is so wrong!! You need to keep the dough thin yet stuff in a generous portion of pineapple. Tough work! But practice makes perfect!

Before the tray goes into the oven, remember to egg wash them so they have this pretty golden brown after they are baked!! Put tray into oven at 175 degree for 10 minutes! And tadah!! The tarts are ready! Remember to leave them to cool before storing them! They get more firm after they are exposed to air for a little while and a lot more tastier!

Please try this recipe out and share them with me!!