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.