I must confess, I’m not exactly crazy about pineapple tarts. Yes, completely inconceivable, I know, given that these tarts are a staple in every household here in Singapore come Chinese New Year. But I have two perfectly valid reasons; my family makes them EVERY year and the process is extremely laborious, especially if one makes the pineapple jam from scratch.

In the past few years, my dad has taken over the time-consuming process that is pineapple jam making. I think it could be because:

a) He actually enjoys the process because I cannot imagine why anyone would otherwise take on a task which consists of grating 8 - 10 ripe honey pineapples by hand and then standing in front of a hot stove, constantly stirring a pot of juicy grated pineapples for 3 - 4 hours until almost all the juice has cooked away and the jam has caramelized to a lovely golden colour.

b) He wants to make sure that his favourite pineapple tarts are on the Chinese New Year baking schedule. There’s no denying the persuasive power of the following argument: “But I’ve already spent hours slaving over the stove making the jam.”

My mum prefers open-faced tarts to rolled balls of pastry with pineapple filling, so the next steps are making, kneading, rolling and cutting the tart dough. The small tarts are then brushed with egg yolk, filled with pineapple jam and finally topped with strips of pastry, which are then also brushed with egg yolk. It may sound easy, but I’m usually pretty tired by the time we get to the 4th tray of tarts.

Every year, after the last tray of tarts comes out of the oven, I tell myself that I won’t make pineapple tarts next year. But deep down, I know that we’d still end up doing it because my brother, who’s a really picky-eater and who’d travel miles for good food, tells us that he’s yet to taste any pineapple tarts that are as good as these.

Here’s wishing everyone a very Happy Chinese New Year!

My friend, S, gave me a bottle of her homemade lemon curd a while ago and I managed to do her deliciously tangy lemon curd justice by using it in these 4″ wide lemon meringue tarts.

I was feeling too tired to bake tart shells from scratch and went with finely crushed digestive biscuits, caster sugar and melted butter for the crust. While it was convenient, I was to discover later that I should have made a proper crust.

For the fluffy tuffs of meringue, I used the cooked meringue method, which according to Jamie Oliver’s book, Cook with Jamie, gives a meringue even more stable than italian meringue. I had the most fun with this little project when browning the meringue with my small blow torch, which incidentally has been acting up for some time now. I suspect I’ll be needing a new one soon.

The tangy lemon curd went wonderfully well with the sweet meringue. The crushed biscuit crust, however, turned a little soft after a while out of the refrigerator, probably because I couldn’t press the crumbs together as tightly in the small tart rings. Next time, I’ll definitely be more diligent and make a proper baked crust.

Today is the first free day I’ve had in a long while to try something new. I’d bought some Israeli white peaches a week ago, but found them to be sadly lacking in flavour. I decided to poach them first before they went bad and consider what to do with them later since I was short on time last week.

Having spent way too much time in the kitchen the last few weeks, I couldn’t bring myself to embark on another time-consuming project and decided to make danishes with the poached peaches and store bought puff pastry.

The puff pastry looked pretty enough, but was slightly undercooked on the bottom, even though I’d baked it longer than the duration recommended on the packaging. Still, the peaches were tender and full of cinnamon flavour. I think I’ll try them with some Dreyer’s vanilla ice cream tomorrow!

Poached Peaches

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 cinnamon sticks (use 1 stick if you prefer a milder cinnamon flavour)
5 cloves
5 pepper corns

Fresh peaches, halved and pitted (there is no need to peel the peaches)

Directions
1. Place the water, sugar, cinnamon sticks, cloves and pepper corns in a large sauce pan. Make sure that the pan is large enough so that all the peach halves can be immersed in the sugar syrup.
2. Bring the sugar syrup to boil. Reduce the heat and bring to a gentle simmer.
3. Poach the peaches in the simmering sugar syrup for approximately 10 - 15 minutes, until the peaches are tender and translucent.
4. Remove the peaches from the sauce pan with a slotted spoon.
5. Remove the skin from the poached peaches. The skins should slide off very easily.

Pineapple tarts are a Lunar New Year staple. My family makes these tarts every year.

The pineapple jam is cooked on the stove for 3 hours, together with cinnamon sticks, cloves and sugar. The pastry dough is made by kneading butter, flour, water and eggs together. The balls of pineapple jam are then pressed onto the individually egg-brushed pastry dough.

My mum received a small basket of beautiful yellow peaches recently and very generously shared some with me. I decided to try poaching them and incorporating them into a dessert. The result was this lovely golden brown frangipane tart, which is really just a variation of this tart.

I loved the taste and texture of the puffed up frangipane, which went really well with the wonderfully plump and moist poached peaches.

I was inspired to bake this tart after seeing the lovely photo in Baking Illustrated. The pears were poached in sugar syrup with a cinnamon stick and black pepper corns.

The smell of the baked frangipane was wonderful. The only problem I had was that the pears were still very firm despite having been left to ripen on the counter for 5 days. I’ll have to plan way ahead the next time.

In my opinion, the most important element of a pie is not its filling, but its crust. A good baked crust should be flaky on the outside and relatively dry on the inside. A good pastry dough should be easy to roll out and lift into the pie pan as opposed to stubbornly sticking to the counter and making the transfer from counter to bake form a nightmare.

Which is why I opted to use Sherry Yard’s master flaky pie dough (from her book Secrets of Baking) for this particular savoury pie. The resulting dough was a breeze to handle, allowing me to form a pretty seal around the edge.

The inspiration for the delicious spinach & minced pork filling came from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, but I was glad that I passed on her suggested pastry recipe. I’d used it previously and found it to be really difficult to roll out.

The result was a truly scrumptious pie that was a little time consuming to make, but definitely worth the effort!

I was intrigued by this apple pie when I came across it in Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess. It is completely encrusted (lame pun intended) in pastry dough - definitely not your usual apple crumble pie or lattice apple pie.

Having had one bad experience with the same pastry crust, I went against my better judgement and gave the recipe a second go.

The pastry turned out better than my first attempt, but I won’t be using this apple pie filling again. Although the finished pie looks rather impressive with very promising ingredients in the filling - pureed apples & apple chunks pan fried in butter, I found the apples a tad chunky. The texture was not at all what I’d expected it to be.