Sunday, February 14, 2010

Chinese New Year Chronicles: Part II



If there's Part I, there ought to be at least a Part II right?

So, here it is, pineapple tarts, nastar style. I was really excited to try out this new style of pineapple tarts. And I must say, I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out, especially since it is my maiden attempt.

For some reason, it seems like many people are attempting this style of pineapple tarts this new year which really made me geared up to try these little rolls.

Some time last year, I came across a biscuit pump and I just had to buy it. I told myself I would I want to get the biscuit pump, so when the time comes, I'd have no excuse not to try. Right? Wrong. I nearly gave up the chance of opening my brand new biscuit pump especially since after a full week of pineapple tart making

What made me press on (pun intended) was the remaining balls of pineapple filling and that I was tasked to bake at least one bottle of tarts for ourselves. 

 

 I was reluctant to search for a new recipe and so I decided to modify my previous pastry recipe to hopefully, make it work for the nastar type. Since I knew that the pastry had to be soft enough to be piped out, yet firm enough to retain its shape and pattern during the baking process, I simply added more yolk to the pastry dough.

Although the tarts turned out acceptable, it wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be. The pastry had a little melt down and the patterns were not as visible =( However, my mum's friend loved it and said it was simply "melt-in-the-mouth".

With the amout of hard work involved, it is no wonder why these type of pienapple tarts are a tad pricey. The laborious action of having to pipe the dough, roll it up and cutting off the excess is jus simply time-consuming. My mum took a liking to how pretty each one looked when lined up on the baking tray and asked why didn't I sell these instead. Well, I guess it is pretty obvious, because of the amount of time spend laboring over each and every single tart, this is an absolute no-no for large scale productions, in a home kitchen.

Without further ado, here goes the recipe! With step-by-step pictures which I hope will inspire some to try this out. Next CNY perhaps? =p

Pineapple Tarts - Nastar Style
makes ~150 or more

Ingredients:

A:
360g Unsalted Butter, cold and cubed

B:
480g Plain Flour, sifted
100g Icing Sugar, sifted
2 Tbsp Custard Powder
4 Tbsp Milk Powder
1/2 tsp Salt

*mix well*

C:
3 Egg yolks
1-1/2 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

*mix well*

Method:
1. Rub A into B until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
2. Add in C until a soft dough forms.
3. Using a biscuit pump, attached with the desired pattern, fill the pump with pastry dough. do not attempt to fill it to the brim as you will encounter difficulty pumping the dough out. Fill it just 1/2 full.
4. Pipe out a strip of dough approximately 10-12cm long. It's better to have it longer than shorter, as the excess could always be cut away.


5. Roll 1 level teaspoon of pineapple filling into a small sausage. approximately the width of the piped dough. And place the filling on one end of the piped dough.


6. Starting from the end with the filling, roll up the dough swiss roll style.




7. Cut away the excess dough with a knife. The excess dough can be gathered and used again and again until all the dough has been used up.



8. Place it on a baking tray. Pre-heat the oven to 190C and bake for 12 min.


9. Remove the baked tarts from the oven and allow it to cool on the baking tray. Store it only when they have cooled completely.



Enjoy!!


7 comments:

baby_mei said...

you've such an excellent ability to shape the jam into a perfect round balls ^^ i've never done that... yet at least ^^ i like that ^^

faithy said...

Happy New Year! :) Your pineapple tarts look exceptionally pretty & yummy! :) Awesome!

youfei said...

Hi baby_mei!

Thanks for the compliemts! It's really quite easy..no rocket science involved. =p Do try it the next time round!

Hi faithy!

Happy New Year!! =D Thanks so much for the compliments!

p/s: love your cakes. Especially the camera one..very very well done. Neat Work!! =D

Pei-Lin said...

Youfei, Happy New Year!! Great write-up with step-by-step tutorial! I'm still in search of THE melt-in-your-mouth pastry recipe for nastars, which upon baking, can be stacked & stored up real well. Ahh ... Cross my fingers ... Sigh ...

Yours look very lovely! Well-done as always. But I think I ain't happy with the same nastar press/pump we're using ... The piped-out pastry is lil' too thin!!?? So, I switched to the traditional one whereby 2 thumbs are required to help press out the dough. Hope we can talk more about it on MSN soon. I feel so defeated!

OPhilia said...

Yummy yummy!!!!! Cant wait to bake with u soon my dear~

youfei said...

Hi Pei-Lin,

Now that you mention, I gotta agree with you! The bottom layer of the rolled tarts I made kinda got crushed =X I'm not sure if it's because it is too fragile though. But generally they all stacked up pretty well with the exception of 1 or 2 crushed ones.

I have no idea how the traditional ones look like..So I'm not sure if the one we have is considered too thin =X I've not seen a real traditional one and I guess the only one I saw was on food4tots' blog. i've no idea where to get it either =p

Hi Philia!

When is your house gonna be ready??

Passionate About Baking said...

Hi Youfei,
Your pineapple tarts looked really good. No wonder it's a sell out! Thanks for sharing the recipe! :)

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