CNY is one month away, I did not plan to bake pineapple tarts because it looks too difficult for my amateur skills :p nevertheless, I spent a few days reading other blogs on the recipes, and yesterday, I just had to bake these - it sounds so fun! I couldn't sleep well when i keep thinking about how to bake something :D
I followed the pineapple tart from Delicious Asian Food. Thank you DAF for sharing this recipe :)
I am not sure how to go about choosing suitable pineapples, so I decided to do a little experiment by using the canned pineapples. That way, if the cookies turn out to be yucky, I will not cry over the hard work grating the fresh pineapples :p
After much research, here is what I gathered about baking pineapple tarts:
- bake in the middle tray
- blending pineapples is a no-no
- you can use ready-made pineapple jam, but it may be too dry after baking, or too sweet
- you can use a food processor, but pulse for only 10-20secs if you like to taste the fibers
- keep dough in fridge until you are ready to use them
- after cutting the dough into shapes, keep the tray inside the fridge until you are ready to bake
- keeping dough in the fridge ensures that the dough will be easier to work with (firm). Else, the dough will keep sticking to the mould
There are lots of tips on Small Small Baker's blog too. Do check it out. Thanks for all bloggers who selflessly share their recipes and tips :)
As you can see from the photo above, the bottom row cookies which have a golden (looks burnt :p) color are the ones with egg yolk wash. I used egg white wash for the rest of the cookies. I just want to test and see the differences in the results. They look kind of ugly :p, I think it is because it did not hold its shape very well. I chilled the dough overnight but still, it started to ooze oil very quickly as I was still at the 4th cookie *sweat* I had to throw the dough back into the fridge again for 10 mins. So I think it is very important that you keep the dough cold all the time. Also, work in small amount of dough each time, keeping the rest in the fridge until you are ready to work on them will help.
For the pineapple paste, I kind of follow Delicious Asian Food's recipe except that I used canned pineapples instead, and I halved the amount (since it is for testing, I just want to bake a small batch). I used 50g sugar and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, as I expected the canned pineapples to be very sweet.
The cookies tasted soft (not sure why), perhaps I over-handled the dough. I was supposed to use my finger tips to gather the mixture into a dough, instead I gave it a few kneads. I was trying to achieve the melt-in-the-mouth effect. The jam tasted ok but it was not chewy enough. I think I will cook it on the stove longer if I were to make these again.
Overall, it is an interesting experiment, and looks like I will need more practice to achieve better results before CNY! :)
Have fun baking CNY cookies! :)
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