Pineapple tart - a CNY must have!

Made 8 pineapples this year, next year I think I need 12 - depends whether the customers will be supplied by TeaRoom proper. If so, we will need more pineapples for TeaRoom but not much for home since I only need to bake for home. Or, I will buy home supply from TeaRoom. :)

I have only a little jam left in the fridge and will make some extras for home. I think my customers get more supply than my family and I do this year. Haha...

Pineapple tart making involves a lot of effort and man-hour, unless you buy ready made jam. Homemade jam is always fresher and purer. The jam consist of pineapples and sugar and nothing more. No additives, no preservatives and definitely no jelly added to give the mass.

Since one of the comments last year was not enough jam filling, the filling has increased this year. There are so far good comments from the customers, MFG was one of my biggest customers, also an agent selling on behalf to his friends. Thanks!

This year's comments were good however, there was one which said that the pastry was too crumbly. I am not exactly sure if that's just a matter of preference since most of us likes melt in the mouth (in other word crumbly?) pastry. However, only 2 to 5 minutes of extra baking time can result in a "tougher" pastry, but erm... is that necessary? I must check with other customers before changing method. Or perhaps the tarts for the last few boxes were not cool enough before packing, hence the moisture caused the pastry to turn soggy? Maybe soggy gives the crumbly effect? I actually cannot tell for now.

I hate to say this sometimes, but I actually tend to customize my baking more for the taste of the special ones more. Let's hope, finger crossed that my special ones actually represent the general public. Haha...

Pineapple Tart

One of my major "project" for CNY (started last year) is pineapple tart. It was an experiment last year, inspired by SB. I had quite a few inquiries last year after giving them out as CNY gift, but couldn't fulfil those requests due to lack of time. This year, I face shortage again, in fact, there is no pineapple tart in this house. Yeah, the production house has no pineapple tart to feed the member in its own house, on the first day of CNY! Need to produce more soon.

Individually shaped

Ready for the oven

Baked pineapple tarts

Packed

Made some smaller boxes as well - MC ordered some as gift-away for her colleagues. The pineapple tarts were wrapped together with a packet of Almond and Chocolate biscotti. That was also my gift to Little Bro.

At the end of last weekend, I've made 8 large boxes and 5 small boxes of pineapple tarts; 4 butter cakes; 2 batches of biscotti and some mini cupcakes.

Pineapple Tarts

Finally! My pineapple tart blog entry...

Pineapple tarts have always been my favorite, it had used to be my Chinese New Year indulgence. I remember we'd had to source for good pineapple tart "supplier" every year and we always order homemade pineapple tarts, never bought from the supermarket. Last year, I got a special request/ order for pineapple tarts. I thought, why not? Since I love pineapple tarts too. I had my ex-colleagues as my "guinea pigs" then, and although the pineapple jam was a success during the first time, the finalized dough for the tart pastry is the 5th recipe I tried.



Always go for homemade pineapple jam instead of the can or pre-packed ones, those are very "jelly" and you don't taste much of the pineapple, instead, you might be getting the pineapple taste from the pineapple essence and colouring. The best is to keep the ingredient of the pineapple jam to fresh pineapple and sugar only. For those who had done homemade jam before, you know how much effort this is, so don't complain about the price!

Pineapple tarts come in many different shape and design. The very first pineapple tart I had was the nyonya style, flower shape, opened-top type, and there will normally be a "cross" on top of the jam. I personally like the wrapped up type. Not the completely enclosed type though, because you get too much of pastry then. After experimenting a few design last year, I'd finally settled with this particular shape. Didn't had the time to take a picture of the mould, but basically, the same type of mould had got different style for the jagged area so you get slightly different pattern on the surface. So, it's another round of "hard work" for piping individual piece of pastry and carefully wrapping the jam one by one, it's quite a delicate task since the pastry is quite fragile. Again, don't complain about the price!

There you go, 100% pure pineapple jam made from fresh fruit, wrapped in a creamy melt-in-your-mouth pastry.

Durian Tart - 2nd Attempt

My recent entries made it look as though I'm a big fan of the king of fruits...

The only reason I'm making the tart again is, I've got an sms from SMS-Buddy, "I wan d durian tart, that night potong steam din get to eat it"

Well ok, it was my fault that he didn't get to eat it, erm partially my fault. Since I didn't keep it in the fridge while waiting for him to pick up the tarts, they went bad. But if he were to come earlier, the tart might still stay good. :p (OF COURSE he said it was not my fault... heh)

Anyways, I also have a new tart pastry recipe, which MasterChef said tasted better, so tried making that. The portion of this pastry dough was smaller, so I didn't make enough to try it myself. My two food tasters so far was MC and TheLittleApprentice. They said indeed this was nicer than the last tart pastry I made. Alright, so change of tart recipe then.

The filling... got some durian from Jaya Jusco on Friday. Was lazy to go "shop" at the durian stalls by the road. Decided to get the more "whitish" looking ones because I found the yellowish ones more difficult to puree. It was 3 packets for RM25, due to limited choice, had to get a mixture of D24, D99 (Don't ask me, I don't know much about the categories) and Durian Susu (?). After mum's sampling of the durians, she said D24 was still the best. (ooookaaay...)

The last time I made the durian cream filling, I had a hard time piping it because the nozzle kept being block by the durian which I didn't really puree fine enough. I still find it hard to puree the durian. MC said put them through a sieve (does it look like I'm that patient to put the flesh of perhaps 20 durians through a tiny-hole sieve???). So, blender it was. Still, hard to make it real fine unless I made the durian more liquid for the blender, which means what, add more milk? (I did add milk to blend the durian because since I was using milk to cook the cream anyways. But I didn't really turn the durian into durian milk shake type to blend). The result was, still blocked nozzle but manageable.

There were two parts of the filling, the custard, which was supposed to be used to dazzle on top of the cream, but I made some adjustment and have them fill the base of the tart pastry instead; and the durian cream - which I've modified too and hence couldn't achieve the nice consistency like the recipe book, which gave a really defined and neat piped cream.

The durian cream was a mixture of this durian custard and whipped cream. Due to laziness (big mistake) I didn't whip up another batch of whipped cream (over whipped the first batch a little bit) and used the slightly liquidized whipped cream, plus instead of using the (non-UHT) whip topping, I used UHT whipping cream (because I only need 200ml and the whip topping cream comes in 1liter, would be a waste. If I get the UHT cream instead, I can use the remaining later for pana cotta, oh, yum...). Oppss... side track...

So, the result was still a very "lame" looking durian cream. Ok, the other reason for the cream to fail to form nice peak was because I've added much more durian puree than the supposed recipe, so those amount of whipped cream couldn't have held up the durian puree.

But taste wise... I supposed it was ok... still waiting for feedback from SB. Met up with SB lunch time at KLCC, so that I can pass him the durian tarts while they were still fresh, no chance of them turning bad (hopefully they don't turn watery!). Also gave him 2 small tubs of durian pudding to sample. If he said it's ok, then it's ok on my record since SB is my final judge for my recipes (especially on the SB-inspired series)

Made one specially for MC which is only durian custard, she said it's nicer without the cream part.

Durian Tart - First Attempt

Tried making durian tart as part of the durian desserts request. Made this last weekend, but only had time to upload this entry now. I still have loads to blog, don't have enough time!

My SB told me that the durian cake was nice, even his friend said so :), well done for first attempt according to him. However, he said not enough durian. So for the durian tart, I've increased the amount of durian for the cream.

The tart shells are pretty easy to make, TLA love the tart shell even by itself.

One big mistake when making the durian cream was that the durian puree was not fine enough, hence I couldn't managed to pipe the cream through my nozzle. At the end, in order to be able to pipe through my star shape nozzle (the shape of the durian cream piped from the smooth tip nozzle looked erm... like something gross...). So, I tried to blend the cream again, but that made the cream lost consistency, hence couldn't form a nice defined shape.

SB couldn't come over to pick up the tart on time, and I guess I didn't keep the tart at a cold enough place (office fridge was too full!) Hence, he didn't get to eat them afterall, turned bad :(... So promised to make it again. An improved version hopefully.