chinese new year pineapple tarts

My mother used to make these with her family in Singapore when I was very young and really, there is nothing like a homemade Singaporean Pineapple tart. It's both salty and sweet; crumbly and chewy -- perfection! Asian cookies and desserts tend to not be as sweet as their American counterparts. The closest product I could find on the market are Sunnyhills, that (surprisingly) originated in Taiwan. Of course, they do not ship to the New York. And to be honest, I was hesitant before tasting them because the rectangular shaped ones usually taste like plastic (consider yourself warned).

When the weather gets colder, I tend to retreat to the kitchen, pulling out recipes I have wanted to try-- in particular, these Singaporean style pineapple tarts. Around October of last year, I finally bit the bullet and gave it a go. I narrowed my collection of Singaporean Pineapple Tart recipes to three:

• FatBoo's Pineapple Tarts
• WSJ's Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan's Powerfully Good Cookie
• Wendy's The Best Melt In The Mouth Pineapple Tarts

Clara, my older sister, had sent me the WSJ article almost 10 years ago, but the recipe calls for pandan leaves. If you've lived/visited Southeast Asia, you know that pandan leaves are a subtle, almost mellow flavor. I like how Food.com describes the flavor as being "crucial to Asians as vanilla is to Westerners".

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One of my favorite snacks desserts growing up were these chewy steam layered 'cakes', Kuih Lapis, I would separate the layers and eat them individually-- the original fruit roll-up! Not to be confused with these equally delicious Kuih Lapis.

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Pandan leaves need to be kept fresh and to be honest, I was too lazy to search for them in Chinatown, and FatBoo's version provided a perfectly pandan-free option. I was a little skeptical, since 'cloves' don't normally come to mind when brainstorming alternatives to pandan leaves, but I have since made this recipe 5 times and I just can't believe how easy it is! (tedious, like most of my projects, but easy nonetheless)

There is no need to be this fancy...this was obviously from my first attempt. I've since changed my pineapple butchering to the straight-down-i-don't-care-about-that-last-bit style.

Grating is actually the easy part- go with the smallest cut on a box grater. And on the 3rd or 4th batch, we switched from sieve to cheese cloth, so much better! (Side note: Joel indeed wasted tried to ferment pineapple juice. I do not recommend this, at all.)

This is where I'm still finding my footing-- you're looking for that golden color, but don't go overboard, remember it still has to go into the oven. We overdid it once and it was like biting into a Haribo gummy bear.

 I did make one small change- I use 1 stick of salted butter (just over 100g) and use unsalted for the rest, it was too salty for me the first time!

  

The cookie press is truly not necessary, but Joel's Sai-Yee (aunt) sent one to me. You can also make them enclosed -- but I wasn't into it, I couldn't judge whether my dough was evenly wrapped around the filling. I also don't like the ratio of dough to jam.

 Don't be too generous with the water, but the recipe called for 1/8 tsp water per egg and this is just too egg-y for me.

When we were in Hong Kong for Christmas I was able to get my hands on some fresh pandan leaves and did a taste test with family and friends. While I do prefer the pandan leaves over the cloves, it also takes forever to extract the flavor out. I usually let the pineapple jam reduce for a little over 1 hour; with the pandan leaves, we're looking at 3 hours! No thank you!

I made this batch just in time for our Chinese New Year hotpot dinner, yum! Happy Year of the Horse!