Pineapple making with Cheng ! 2011

This year, seems like everyone else was busy, only Cheng and family was available. Nonetheless, it was still fun. A lot of time to chat as we made the tarts. The 2 boys played WII and billiard.


Unbaked version tarts


Min helping to re-arranged the tarts ?


Cheng actually requested to take a photo with Jojo !


The 2 boys ... acting kool as usual.


The finished products. Rather tough but never mind, still our hardship and efforts put in. We went to Bukit Timah Market to eat a late dinner.

Pineapple Tarts Making 2010

I was appreciative that my friends were able to fulfill my wish of pineapple baking for this CNY ! I think I must have sounded real desperate? genuine ? enthusiastic ? Hee, whatever it is, I was glad that I have asked ...

The week before the pineapple tarts gathering, I have been thinking of how settle my friends' lunch at home. I wasn't a fantastic cook and my inconsistent culinary skills so far has been "tested" on CK and occasionally on my mum. However, I have decided to be brave about it to further "test" it on my friends. Bawahwah ...

Fried items are normally easy, of course. It was just a matter to frying them to near perfection. Well, I admitted that I was a little lazy and did not change the frying oil after I have fried the vegetarian dumplings. The sotong balls, fishcakes and chicken nuggets have some burnt stains on them ! I was also quite anxious about the fried rice as I seldom cook this. The overall fried rice looked appealing but was unfortunately too dry. The noodles was pretty tasteful ... hee hee. Ok, at least one item got positive comments to boost my morale.



After we have regained our energy, it was time for some serious pineapple tarts making ! Oh, the "we" referred to the four ladies, of course ! This year, we were happy that Tiang can join us ! She did not managed to join us last year. We hope that next year, more people can join us too.

Everything went pretty smoothly except that we got unsalted butter instead of salted ones. Somehow, after the pineapple tarts session last year, we more or less knew what should be done. Our Master Fang made the dough while the rest of us rolled the pineapple paste into little balls. The pineapple balls have increased in sizes compared to last year as we wanted to taste the pineapple more. We gossiped as we worked and time passed by quickly. It was entertaining.

Our oven worked differently. Instead of the usual 15-20 minutes of baking time, ours might take another 5-10 minutes more to attain the desired results. We worked fast in getting the pineapple paste inside the dough but the time was wasted on baking them. Nonetheless, we managed to bake all tarts to a satisfactory golden brown.

We were proud and happy with our achievements. They might not be the nicest tarts in the world but the effort and fun of making them far exceeded this. To me, the tarts tasted nice and I couldn't help myself eating a couple more to satisfy my cravings ! Hope the 2 boys and Min Min have fun too! When I told the 2 boys that we will be having 2 gatherings during CNY, JL sounded so happy!

BTW, I have brought them to office and my colleagues gave good comments too !
I am looking forward to CNY whereby we can get together for more good times !


Squeezing the pineapple paste into a bowl !


Tiang showing off a nicely rolled pineapple paste while Master Fang showed off "SIS" sugar ?


Glazing a tart on palm !


All ready to be baked !


Our finished products ! Sure must take photos ! Thumbs up by Master Fang !


Our new kid on the block, Tiang, looking very satisfied.


The man and dog never contributed anything to the pineapple tarts lah, but nonetheless we cannot missed the out! Oh, CK helped with the food-tasting! Easy job!


BC and Min Min ... their gestures seems to imply "gong xi, gong xi" ...


Ar ... our 2 actors as usual. Playing WII and PSP whole day. You were forgiven since you have demonstrated great faith in our bakery !


It is a must now to take group photo for every occasion!

Pineapple Tarts Making 2009

Thanks to BC's suggestion, we had another fun bonding session at Andrew & Esther's house. This time, it was trying our bakery skills on making pineapple tarts as CNY is just around the corner.

We met at about 1pm at Seng Kang. To think of it, CK and myself are the only "Westeners" staying at western part of Singapore. All the 1B18 friends lived either in the central or in the east !

Somehow I thought that we would be the last to arrive after fetching Nicholas but we were the first to arrive. Andrew & Esther's domestic helper, Wati has prepared 2 awesome dishes for us. One dish was the Hokkein mee with the fiery hot chilli and the other was fried chicken wings. Both dishes were nicely done and I even have cravings for them now as I wrote this blog ! We were very impressed with the dishes that we have forgotten to take some photoes of it. (only managed to take a very close shot of what were left of the hokkein mee)


After a long satisfying meal and some funny conversation exchanges, we started to realise the actual purpose which we came for. (Yes, we almost forgot what we came for after the awesome meal!)

We took out all the neccessary bakery items like seiver, electric mixer, trays, kitchen weighing scale and all the ingredients. The ladies began to weigh the ingredients accordingly to the recipe. We have decided to split the baking session into 2 rounds. (to bake about 240 pineapple tarts in 2 sessions)





Each one of us was assigned a different task to perform. However, you were allowed to multi-task if you were sick of your "job".

We operated very much like a military:
Supervisor : Andrew
Asst Supervisor: Esther (aka Andrew's wife, naturally promoted to Asst Supervisor)
Asst Glazer : Colette
Main Chef : Ah Fang
Asst Chef : BC
Pineapple Workers : JL & Diana
Slacker : CK (sleeping most of the time)
Player : Nicholas (playing nintendo most of the time)

From this baking session, 3 distintive characters have been identified.
They were:

新好男人 (New Aged Sensitive Guy)
非常完美男人 (Mr Perfectionist Guy)
内在美男孩 (Mr Inner Beauty boy)

So how did they get these nicknames ? Here's some supported explanations:


新好男人 (New Aged Sensitive Guy- CK, 35+ )- Please refer to my previous blog dated 7 Jan 2009 titled :Times of my Life (3) for more information. Yes, accordingly to female friends and colleagues, my hubby has became a "role-model" of romantic approaches in celebrating birthdays for their wives. They found his gesture very sweet and so so romantic ! I have good sources that some of the female's husbands/boyfriends refused to read my blog !


非常完美男人 (Mr Perfectionist Guy-Andrew, 37) - Andrew got his title because he required quality-assurance, oven-heat precision & accuracy & disciplinery in achieving the highest quality & nice-looking pineapple tarts. So dun play play with this man who seeks perfection in all areas ! We have to give some credit to our supervisor as he has burnt his arm while he was taking out the tarts from the hot oven !


内在美男孩 (Mr Inner Beauty boy-Jun Long, 13)- This 13 year-old has a flair for making perfectly smooth and round pineapple paste roll ! Was it due to his tender and flawless palm ? The pineapple paste roll we made seems to get a lot of wrinkles on them ! But why "内在美" " This was because the pineapple paste rolls he made were to be embedded inside the dough !

So much teasings of our 3 wonderful and unique personalisties, let's go on.

We seems to have different idea on what is the shape of a standard pineapple tart ? From observations, Ah Fang got the best pineapples' shape and size. Needless to say as she was our main Chef on that day ! My pineapple tarts were horrendous, they came in different shapes, length and sizes. Jun Long's first 3 tarts were sadly out-of-shaped and the texture of the dough was irregular and coarse. We called his tarts "creative" ... I cheekily told the crowd that whatever artistic objects that we couldn't identify with can be classified as "abstract art". Hahaha .. just kidding lah.



Finally, we have lined up the tarts on the tray ! The last step was to glaze the tarts so that they have a golden brown colour on top after baking. Colette has her first experience in glazing the tarts with the help of her mummy!



Having a good oven helped in reducing the time for baking. Within 10 minutes, our first batch of pineapple tarts were born ! They were kind of lightly browned and we thought it would be better if we can baked them for another few minutes. After a few minutes of baking, the colouration looked better. Yes, we can "cooled" the tarts first before transferring them into containers !












Now we began our 2nd batch of production. There was an unexpected problem. The electrical mixer went faulty ! Somehow, we couldn't identify what was the problem. We teased that it was because the mixer was a free gift and it was not Philips brand. BC felt very guilty and she went to Compassvale Point to buy a Philips mixer back ! While BC was away, we thought that it would be good if we can do a third batch of baking since we still have the ingredients.



Good times passed by very fast. CK and myself have initially scheduled to leave latest by 6:30pm for dinner. But we only managed to leave about 8:00pm. Wati has helped us to put all the tarts into the containers that we have brought with us.

Nicholas loved the tarts and even requested that I gave him a bottle so that he can shared with Daren! He loved the tarts ! It was a very fulfilling day ! Not only that we have learn how to make pinapple tarts but we have so much fun while doing it !


Preparation of ingredients


Ah Fang demonstrating how to make the dough into a nicely-shaped tart


Bagus ! Let's do this again next year !

PINEAPPLE TARTS RECIPE (about 120 pieces,thanks to Fang)
Plain Flour 620g
Butter 500g
Milk Powder 50g
Sugar 100g (cut reduce to 90g if prefer less sweet, use caster sugar)
4 egg yolk
2 egg yolk (for glazing the tarts)
Pineapple paste 1 pkt (Ready made pkt can purchase from Phoon Huat)
Vanilla essence 1 teaspoon

1) Mix Butter and Sugar using electric mixer.
2) Add in egg yolk
3) Fold in flour and milk powder & vanilla essence
4) Make into a dough (use clean hands)
5) Wrap pineapple paste with pastry into your desired shapes
6) Glaze pineapple tarts top with egg yolk
7) Preheat oven 180 C
8) Bake between 10 to 15 mins (depends on oven heat)

More photoes posted here: