Pineapple tarts'13

This year I cooked my own pineapple jam or my tarts. Bought 8 pineapples to made the jam and endup with  
lots of left over pineapple jam, made two portions of the pastry for my sisters and my own family. The left over jam will do closed tarts to finish it. I prefer salty to sweet pastry to balance the jam sweet sour taste, so I do not add sugar to the pastry.

Pastry:
250g butter
365g plain flour } sifted together
20g corn flour   }
2 egg yolks
a pinch of salt
egg wash


Method:
1. Cut butter into smaller pieces, rub butter to the sifted plain flour and corn flour and salt mixture until it become like bread crumb.
2. Add in egg yolks and let the flour mixture combine and become a dough. Do not over knead the dough.
Chill the dough for 30min.
3. Roll the dough between two sheets of plastic. Sprinkle a little flour on the surface of the dough, cut out the shape of the tart with cookie cutter. Shape the jam into a ball and place on top of the pastry. Brush the tarts with some egg wash.
4. Bake at 160deg C for 25min. Remove from oven and cool. Store in container when tarts are fully cooled.

Kuih Bangkit

I have a little bit more time this year to make cookies for Chinese New Year, I picked kuih bangkit as one of them. I did two portions of Ms Valarie Kong's recipe that I learned couple of years back and also did one recipe from Alan Ooi's cookie book.

Valarie's Kuih Bangkit

Alan Ooi Kuih Bangkit

Below is the recipe for Alan Ooi's Kuih Bangkit from the book 'New Year Cookies published by y3k"..

Ingredients:

3 egg yolks

120g icing sugar

150g concentrated cocconut milk

400g tapioca flour (stir fry in a wok over very low heat till flour become light, sieve and leave it to cool and store for at least 2-3 days)

Method:

1. Beat the egg yolk and icing sugar with a hand-held electric mixer till consistency is thick and creamy. Add in coconut milk and mix well. Lastly, stir in cooled tapioca flour and knead dough thoroughly by hand till dough is white and has a light-textured touch.

2. Roll out dough between two pieces of plastic sheet. Use cookie cutter and cut out the desire shapes. Place them on lined baking trays. Baked in a preheated oven at 170degC for 15-20min. Cookies should be white and not browned. Cool them.

Tips: (extracted from the book)

1.Tapioca flour must be well fried so it becomes light. The cooling process will enable the flour to absorb in the coconut milk so dough will be soft.

2. Dough must be well kneaded to produce light cookies that can melt-in-the-mouth.

3. Always keep dough covered with a piece of clean kitchen towel to prevent drying out.

4. Its also useful to keep some extra coconut milk aside. Sprinkle a little onto dought when texture is very dry. Knead well to smoothen it.