Pineapple tarts. What do they remind you of? Yes! Chinese New Year! How can we resist this buttery, melt-in-your-mouth pastry, chock-full of pineapple jam? My Chinese New Year will not be complete without them. In fact, I never understood why everyone is so crazy about these tarts when I was younger. Our taste for food and things changes as we grow. There are so many I-do-not-eat food when I was still a kid. Eg. red bean paste bun, and I still don’t eat them now. When adults were going gaga over how delish those tarts are, I didn’t know what I was missing out.
Till one day, a few years ago, my cousin gave us a tub of homemade pineapple tarts. It’s not the commonly tart, where the pineapple jam are exposed on top. This one has the jam wrapped inside. I guess I was in an adventurous mood that day that I decided to give it a try. The jam was not too sweet, with a tint of sourness. And the crust does not crumble when you take a bite. So that was it. I was hooked! And now I have to control myself whenever the festive arrives. Ok, I tell myself 2 will be the max for today. At the end of the second one, I just thought, one more doesn’t hurts. Woohoo… counting all the calories.
So it’s already June, and why am I still talking about pineapple tarts? I just wanna share some pics I took during Chinese New Year when we girls were having a baking session. There isn’t many times where you can really do girly things with your girlfriends, other than shopping, chatting over coffee. I thought why not do something more fun. Let’s have a bonding session while baking. Since it was near Chinese New Year, baking pineapple tarts would be so appropriate.
We baked up a storm at AC’s house. I love baking sessions like this cos everyone shares the bakes. And shares the calories load too! Hehee…
Since we had a whole afternoon to spare, we added 2 more items to the bake list. Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins and Chocolate Chip Cookies. Orange goes so well with chocolate and this one has orange zest in it which really brings out the flavour of the fruit. In fact, chocolate goes hand in hand with so many other ingredients like, mint, hazelnut, bananas. And yes, there are even chocolate durian cake!
Look, whose the greedy one with lots of chocolate chips mixed into the muffin batter.
Next is the Chocolate Chip Cookies. The original recipe didn’t call for cocoa powder. Being the choc lovers, we added some to the batter for a even more chocolaty cookie.
It was really fun churning out the pineapple tarts, which took up most of the time. Luckily PS had made the pineapple jam in advanced, else we wouldn’t be able to finish baking by nightfall. It’s not easy working with the buttery dough, really needs some skills rolling them. It’s soft and thus we had a hard time pushing it out from the cutter. We made some berry jam tarts out of the very nice and cute flower cookie cutter as the pineapple jam are all used up. Looks so pretty.
Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins
Recipe adapted from Fonia at Kitchen Capers
Makes 12 Muffins
Dry Ingredients:
½ cup plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (coated with 2 tsp plain flour)
Wet Ingredients:
½ cup butter, melted
½ cup sugar
3 tbsp (45g) melted cream cheese
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1½ tsp grated orange rind
¾ cup orange juice
½ tsp rum (optional)
- Preheat oven to 190°C. Sift the dry ingredients (except the chocolate chips) into a large bowl and mix well. Make a well in the centre. Set aside.
- Melt butter in microwave at HIGH for 30 secs or till totally melted; Add sugar into the hot butter, stir till sugar dissloved; Add in the rest of the wet ingredients & stir till well-combined.
- Pour the wet mixture into the centre of the dry mixture. Using a whisk or a spatular, stir till just moisten (mixture will be lumpy). DO NOT OVER STIR! Muffin batter are supposed to be lumpy. Sprinkle the chocolate chips into the batter, stir lightly with 1 - 2 strokes.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups (¾ full). Bake for about 20 mins or until tester inserted to the centre comes out clean.
We are planning another session soon. So stay tuned!
