Some notes on pineapple tarts 2011

Hahaha, yah. If you take a look at the pineapple tarts I made last year, and compare those to the batch this year, you'll notice the color difference for the filling..

Filling 2011 is more golden and less dry, which is more perfect than last year's version. The texture for filling 2011 is also finer and slightly more delicate. To get this consistency, I've used:

- 2 large pineapples, chopped finely with some small chunks with an electric chopper/blender, remove excess juice
- about 150g rock sugar
- 1 stick of cinnamon
- caster sugar to taste

Slowly cook the pineapples in one big pan over a small fire, stirring every so often. The pineapples will release more juices when the pineapples start to cook. Continue to stir until the juices start drying up.

When the filling looks about dry but still feels damp, throw in the rock sugar, and let it melt and caramelize slowly. This will give the filling that nice golden color. By this step, the pineapple tart filling should be just slightly damp and has a slight translucency.

Add in the caster sugar and give it a taste. If it's still very sour, add a bit more sugar. Stir a few more minutes and turn off the fire. Let the filling cool down before storing it in the refrigerator.

Making pineapple tarts this weekend..

And I've just finished preparing the filling.

The process was looonngg... 3 hours worth of hard work and long wait to get...

...from this (of course the original state of the pineapple filling was the pineapple itself, but I was too busy cutting up and grating the 2 LARGE pineapples to take any photos):

To this:

And yes, I'm a little mad to do this when I should be sleeping. Hahahaaa..

Part 1 of making pineapple tarts...

The pineapple tart filling....

Got the recipes (there are 4) from my colleague, but I had no idea how big a medium pineapple was... The recipe (for filling made from fresh pineapples) calls for 2 medium pineapples... The ones selling at NTUC look like they're more of a small than a medium...

My colleague said they managed to make about 80 pieces from the stated amount of ingredients in the recipe. But since I'm not going to make tons of tarts, I decided to reduce the ingredients by half, which means I needed 1 medium pineapple... But I bought 2 small ones to replace it...

I also used much less sugar than the ratio provided... (150 grams for 1 medium pineapple... I think I used less than 1/2 cup... maybe a quarter??) I guess Malaysian Honey Pineapples taste sweeter than other pineapples... And perhaps, raw cane sugar has a stronger taste, so a little goes a long way...?

Oh, I didn't reduce the 1 cinnamon stick by half though.. I used a small saucepan to cook the filling in 2 small batches. If I were to use only half a cinnamon stick, that would mean I had to do the almost insane act of splicing the half stick into quarters for each batch...

Actually, from the look of the end product, I don't think I can make 40 pieces of tarts out of it... Maybe 1 medium pineapple = 3 or 4 small pineapples after all..?

The filling is now resting in the refrigerator.. Need to buy plain flour later after work.. Stay tuned for part 2..