Serving desserts with auspicious meanings during Chinese New Year is symbolic of sweet wishes for the new year.

Today, we nurture and bring this tradition into our own children's lives. And to yours too! After many years of baking and modifying different recipes, we reckon our Ange has really nailed it this time. SO GOOD!

Here is the recipe to share with you x

Pineapple Tarts Recipe (Malaysian)

Pastry

2 1/2 cups (350g) all-purpose flour
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp icing sugar
1 cup (225g) unsalted butter (room temperature)
2 egg yolks
1 egg yolk (egg wash)

Pineapple jam filling

1200g fresh pineapple
200g caster sugar
1 tsp cloves 

Instructions

MAKE JAM

1. Cut fresh pineapple into pieces and blend together with 200g sugar until it becomes a juicy pulp
2. Pour into a saucepan, add cloves and cook mixture on medium to low heat for 45-60minutes, stirring continuously to avoid burning
3. Cook until most of the liquid has evaporated and the pineapple jam turns darker and golden in colour
4. Cook for an extra 5-10 minutes if needed, jam should be soft and sticky
5. Remove cloves and put jam aside to cool in the fridge

MAKE PASTRY

1. Mix the flour, cornstarch. salt and sugar in a big bowl
2. To the flour mixture, add the butter (at room temperature) and egg yolks and knead to form the dough by hand
3. The dough is ready when it does not stick to your hand (add a bit more butter if the dough feels too crumbly - it is ready when the dough does not stick to your hand and feels easy to work with)

BAKE

1. Pre-heat oven to 180*C and line two trays with baking paper
2. Prepare approx. 40 small portions of pineapple jam by scooping 1 tsp of jam filling and rolling into balls
3. Divide the dough into 4 portions - keep other portions in the bowl in the fridge (covered) while you work with 1 portion at a time
4. With each portion of dough, work quickly on a floured surface to roll out to 1/2cm thickness
5. Using a 5cm crinkle edge scone cutter (or a similar sized round or flower shaped cutter), cut tart bases and place on a lined baking trays about 1 inch apart
6. Repeat with all the dough portions, collecting the dough offcuts to make the lattice strips
7. Place one ball of pineapple jam in the centre of each tart base
8. Use the dough offcuts to roll out thin strips of dough, place two strips in a cross lattice pattern on top of the pineapple tarts
9. Beat one egg yolk and brush egg wash over all the tarts
10. Bake in oven for approx. 20 minutes until golden brown

STORAGE - if you make a big batch of these, they can be stored up to 4-6 weeks. Make sure they have fully cooled to room temperature before stacking them in an air-tight container - re-using a Milo tin works well for this. This will prevent the tarts from going mouldy.