nothing in particular

We decided to re-attempt macarons today and due to the fact of leftover egg yolks, we had to do something that requires the YOLK but not the WHITE.

So~ pineapple tarts become part of the adventure as we struggled to make sense out of tonnes of macaron recipes available online.

Pineapple tarts with melt-in-your-mouth crust and pineapple jam adapted from this blog.



As the recipe used canned pineapples, we decided to go ahead and save ourselves the trouble.
Place 2 cans of pineapple cubes into the blender.



Blend into pulp and drain off the excess syrup.



Time to cook the pineapple jam..but first mix in the herbs and sugar. OMG~ how much sugar did the recipe say??



1 cup of pineapple : 1 cup of sugar OR 1 cup pineapple : 0.75 cup of sugar.
We have 2 cups of pineapple pulp here and since they came from the can, we will use 0.75 * 2 = 1.5 cups of sugar O_______O!!!

*No more pineapple tarts for me ever*



The sugar got dissolved into the pineapple pulp swiftly and we dropped in 1 cinnamon stick, 3 cloves and 1 segment of star anise. And not to forget 1/2 tbsp of lemon juice.



Cooking the pineapple jam over SLOW fire takes about 30-40mins *yawn*, keep stirring else its gonna stick to the bottom of the pot and get burnt. From several comments in the blog, we also noted that pineapple jam that were not cooked till dry(no more water) will get mouldy pretty soon..so we cooked till it was sticky and left it to cool.


Now the pastry dough, put in butter and icing sugar. *SPAR mixer in use*



Cream till cold butter cubes is pale in color, light and fluffy



Add in 1 yolk, vanilla essence and continue mixing.



Once the above is done, put in the plain flour and continue mixing until it becomes a dough.



Hmm~ it did turn into a dough. According to the blog post's comments, some people commented that the dough was too crumbly to roll and one suggestion was to add more butter to it, but we decided to give that option a pass cos we wanted to try the actual recipe *ok, we were lazy*



Let the dough rest in the fridge for 30mins.


It turns out that K has got cookie cutters chucked somewhere in his cabinets and WOOT its just the kind we use for pineapple tarts o.O


The dough proved to be a challenge to roll/*do anything* cos it was crumbly, but we pressed on using one piece for bottom and another for the top *to cover before rolling into a ball* and there we have it..larger than bite size PINEAPPLE BALLS! -_-'''



I must say K has a flair for cutting and printing using that cookie cutter, I didn't have complete patterns like his >=0

Apply egg glaze onto the cookies before baking.



The completed product.



Taste test:

30mins after the pineapple tarts were out of the oven:
YY: It's so crumbly that you got to eat it whole else it's gonna end up all over the place and you can't talk either cos the powder(from the crumbs) will be flying out of your mouth. -_-'' and it's not sweet *despite 1.5cups of sugar???*

K: It's melt in your mouth yum yum..but its not sweet enough, I can't taste the pineapple. O.O

Later in the night(same day):
K's mum: You should use fresh pineapples next time

K's sister: It's sweet but the pineapple flavour is not strong enough O_O

Two days later:
K: It tastes sweet now and the butter taste from the pastry is more obvious.

YY: *What?!* It tastes sweet now and the pastry is no longer dry and power like. Now this is weird.

Conclusion:
1. Use fresh pineapples
2. Cook the pineapple jam with the spices all the way till dry instead of taking them out halfway which was what we did cos we were afraid that the spices may result in bitter aftertaste.
3. Add more butter to the crust pastry recipe.