できました！ Pineapple tarts!

Made some rabbit-shaped pineapple tarts!

The pre-baked tarts.. They look very design-ish, don't they? Hahaha...

But the egg-wash on the post-baked version looks kinda funky...

Of course, I also made normal-looking ones to be given to family.

A whole lot of pineapple tarts! Not too sweet filling with melt-in-your-mouth but not-in-your hands crust! Yum!

Part 2 of making pineapple tarts

Made the dough using the recipe here. But after weighing the amount of filling I had (which was barely 200g), I most certainly had to half the amount of ingredients.

I also used champagne instead of vanilla essence.. Yes, you hear me right.. Champagne, as in the alcohol.. Well, another recipe suggests using brandy, and since I didn't have vanilla essence at hand, and my mum said that there's already an opened bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, and she claimed that using champagne is no different from using brandy......... Well, well, it's only about 1 teaspoon of alcohol.. No big deal..

For the baking part, I baked the tart bases first for about 10 minutes, before brushing on the egg yolk glaze and putting the pineapple filling in. After which, I baked for about another 8 minutes. This is a trick I learnt from another recipe which prevents the glaze from cracking and the pineapple filling from being too dry and hard.

I ended up with a few extra tart bases as I ran out of filling, and I'd already reduced the filling for the smaller tarts.. I guess 3 small pineapples would make just enough filling for this amount of tarts.. As for the extra tart bases, I filled them with jam.. Hahaha..

I strongly recommend the recipe that I linked here (for the tart bases) as well as the tricks that I've learnt. The tart bases are solid on the outside (which hold the shape quite well) but crumbly on the inside (almost melt-in-the-mouth!)... yum!

Maple leaf and flower... Autumn vs Spring..

*Update: I used top flour instead of plain flour... No idea if this gave the tart bases a nice crumbly feel without "disintegrating"...

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..