Small Batch Baking : Pineapple Tarts 黄梨酥 for Chinese New Year

pineappletarts // mono+co

I used the open-filling pineapple tart pastry recipe from here and shape the tarts into a kueh nastar look-alike, following Billy Law’s vimeo instructions.

The end result: 27 delicious melt in the mouth morsels.

// Adapted from A Spoonful Of Sugah
// Yields 27 tarts

170g plain flour
10g corn flour
1 tablespoon icing sugar
125g salted butter, cold
1/4 egg, cold
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 tablespoon cold water
Pineapple Jam, store bought.


01. Measure plain flour in small mixing bowl first.  Add icing sugar.  Sieve this mixture into a large mixing bowl.
02. Measure cornflour in small mixing bowl.  Sieve to combine with plain flour and sugar.
03. Transfer sieved flour and sugar mixture into the small mixing bowl.
04. Sieve mixture one more time into the large mixing bowl.
// {The instructions above simply read : Sieve plain flour + icing sugar + corn flour, twice.  I am merely trying to reduce the cleaning up efforts after baking}
05. Crack egg into a separate small bowl, beat it.  Pour half of this into another bowl, and then half  it again, to get 1/4 egg.  Reserve another 3 tablespoons of the remaining egg in a sauce dish for egg wash later.  Balance can be kept aside for other recipe.
06. Stir vanilla extract to the 1/4 egg and mix well. {I prepare egg+vanilla mixture first so that I can add this into the dough mixture straight after rubbing in the flour.  The fingers would be too oily handle and measure the egg and vanilla extract later.)
07. Next, measure cold butter (I simply use half a stick of 250g Lurapak), and cut it up into small pieces on a plate.
08. Add the butter into the flour and swiftly rub butter into flour with clean fingertips until mixture resemble yellow bread crumbs.
09. Fingers will be messy with butter and flour.  With a pastry scraper, scrap the bits stuck on fingers back into the bowl.  The butter is too good and expensive to be wasted!
10. Add egg + vanilla mixture, mix with a metal spoon.
11. Add 1 tablespoon of icy cold water and mix again.  A soft dough ball should now form; a bit too wet to be shaped by hands, but dry enough not to stick onto the mixing spoon.
12. Chill dough in the fridge for 30 minutes.
13. While the dough is chilling, roll pineapple jam into tiny balls, arrange them on a plate. (I used the one that I cut my butter on, to save washing one more plate)
14. Preheat oven to 150C.
15. After 30 minutes, remove dough from fridge and wrap the pineapple jam into the dough like this. (8g jam/ 12g dough)
16. Arrange tarts on baking tray.  Use a fork to draw lines on top of the tarts. Egg wash surface of tarts.
17. Bake in preheated oven at 150C for 20minutes.
18. Cool completely before storing in an air tight container.