Pineapple tarts

This recipe makes about 40-50 pineapple tarts.

Adapted from: http://nasilemaklover.blogspot.com/2013/02/my-best-melt-in-mouth-pineapple-tarts.html

What makes this recipe good:

1. Freezing the filling makes it easy to work with
2. Soft dough wraps around the filling easily
3. The cheese in the crust provides a nice contrast to the sweet, tart pineapple filling.

For a more detailed description of the steps in this recipe, check out my other post on How to Make Pineapple Tarts.

Ingredients

For the filling

• 2 20oz cans of crushed pineapple, in juice
• 100g of sugar

For the crust

• 160g All Purpose flour
• 75g almond flour
• 20g parmesan cheese
• 6g salt

• 175g softened butter
• 50g condensed milk
• 1 egg yolk

For aesthetics

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon water
• black sesame seeds

Method

For the filling

1. Place the canned pineapples in a sieve and drain as much liquid as you can.

1. In a blender or food processor, blend the pineapples. It’ll look sort of like a slushie.
2. Using a heavy bottomed non stick pan, spread the pineapple slush so that you’re maximizing the surface area of the pan. Cook on high heat until most of the liquid is cooked off. This should take about 4-5 minutes.
3. Add the sugar to the pineapple in the pan. Stir it so that that the pineapples and sugar are mixed.
4. Keep stirring occasionally until the mixture achieves a paste like texture and takes on a golden/caramel/orange color. This takes another 3-4 minutes.
5. Remove from heat. From now on I’ll refer to this mixture as the “filling”.

1. On a baking sheet lined with parchment, dollop half teaspoon amounts of filling on to the parchment. Repeat until the sheet is full.

1. Place the tray into the freezer to freeze until solid.

1. Once the filling is solid, you can roll the parchment paper (with the filling on it) up (like a fruit roll-up, but don’t flatten the pineapple pieces), put it in a ziplock bag and it will keep for about a month in the freezer.

For the crust

1. In a large food processor (see notes at the end for instructions if you have a small food processor), place all of the ingredients (both dry and wet).
2. Pulse the food processor about 10 times until the dough comes together. The dough will be very soft.

1. If you’re not using the dough immediately, you can put it in the refrigerator. It’ll keep for about a week.

To assemble

1. Take the frozen filling out from the freezer in small batches. Frozen filling is much easier to work with.
2. Use room temperature dough. You’ll want it soft. If it’s too sticky, chill the dough for a bit in the fridge. (In the summer, “room temperature” can get too warm and the dough will be sticky.)
3. Take about half a teaspoon of dough, ball it up, and place it in your hand.
4. Push a piece of filling into the ball of dough. The dough will cup around the filling.
5. Using your fingers, close the dough around the filling. If there isn’t enough dough to cover the filling, add more dough.

1. Roll up the now filled dough into a ball. This is to make it look nice and smooth; you can really form any shape you want.

For aesthetics

1. Prepare an egg wash: combine the egg yolk and tablespoon of water. Mix it up.
2. Using a pastry brush or whatever brush you have, brush the egg wash on to the unbaked tart balls.
3. Top with black sesame seeds.

1. (Other ways of making it pretty include scoring the tarts so they look like little pineapples.)

Baking

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Bake for 15 min on the center rack.
3. Let the tarts cool down for at least 20 minutes before eating. The filling will be very hot when just out of the oven.

Enjoy!

Notes

If you have a mini processor: