Everyone in Malaysia and Singapore knows what pineapple tarts are. These little pastries overpopulate both countries every Chinese New Year in every possible shape and size and also quality. The type of pineapple tart you like also says a lot about your personality and taste.
First we have the Classic, the delicate open face tart with a Nonya heritage. I've always went for open face tarts since I was little, reasoning that I could see how much pineapple they had--maybe I was greedy. The most beautiful ones I've seen were made by a wonderful old lady who actually cut out scalloped strips of pastry for the latticed tart faces, and who pricked the edges of the tarts with a fork so the whole tart was patterned. Too pretty to eat--almost.
Then you have the Spongebob type, the huge golf-ball like tarts bursting with filling, often with bits of pineapple in the jam, created for those people who eat pineapple tarts for the sake of the pineapple (apparently not everyone does.) Very hard to look elegant while eating one, but who cares?
Otherwise we have the Neat Petite, the closed pineapple tart which usually ends up in less mess and also less pineapple (unless you go for the huge, square, compact Taiwanese Titan of a pineapple tart.) I observe that people who feel the guilt pangs of health-consciousness, but aren't able to actually forego Chinese New Year goodies, tend to go for this type of pineapple tarts. It probably makes one feel better. Less pineapple. Or at least, you don't have to look at it--maybe you can pretend it's not there. Honestly, I don't know. Just eat the tart.
Or you have the I'm Sick of Pineapple Tarts but we still have to eat them because it's Chinese New Year---the modern travesty of cheese flavoured, chocolate etc pineapple tarts. Tchh. I'm old fashioned.
Regardless of type, pineapple tarts are very traditional and notoriously hard to make--to be absolutely legit, the pineapple paste must be made by painstakingly cutting hordes of pineapples, boiling them for ages with sugar and stirring tirelessly until it becomes the iconic sweet sticky paste.
I knew I wasn't at this level yet, but I still wanted to give homemade pineapple tarts a whack. After all, it's so quintessentially SouthEast Asian, or at least Singaporean Chinese. Never mind that you can buy pineapple tarts everywhere in every possible shape and size and type, and most people have had enough of them by the end of Chinese New Year (though I've never experienced that personally. I think a Chinese New Year without pineapple tarts throughout all 15 days would be very disturbing.)
A very talented friend of mine assured me that pineapple tarts was nothing doing. (Though then again, she says that for just about all of her skills, none of which I've found half as easy as she declares them to be.) She came and made them at my place and gave me her recipe for a light buttery pastry, using bought pineapple paste (if she'd tried to teach me how to make the paste from scratch I think I would never have tried a repeat performance. I have never actually tried making pineapple paste. But I have a pretty good idea of it, based on exhausting memories of making kaya under the relentless dictatorship of my grandma. )
They turned out, unsurprisingly under her expert hand, very well. I learnt a few tips from her and felt bold enough to try it again on my own the next Chinese New Year.
French butter. 'It MUST be French butter, dear. Elle and Vire!' I faithfully went all the way to a baking needs shop to look for the exact brand of French butter she had prescribed. Unfortunately, they didn't have it. I had to settle for another brand that was also French by its country of manufacture, but didn't have half such a Frenchy-sounding name. Thankfully, a rose by any other name smells as sweet; the principle apparently applies to butter.
A drop of red food colouring in the egg wash, just before the tarts go into the oven. EUREKA, my mind screamed. What a brilliant tip for beautifully golden, professional-looking tarts. Not such a good idea, I was forced to add later, when my inexperienced hand accidentally dunked considerably more than one drop of colouring into the egg wash. Whoops. Keeping excellently in line with the Chinese New Year mood, the tarts went merrily into and out of the oven looking like weird little hong-bao's. They were a lurid shade of orangey red which were a warning to me, ever after, to be wary when adding 'just one drop'--something I should have learnt in chemistry, I suppose.
'And don't buy the normal grade of pineapple paste. Make sure you get the reduced sugar one, or it'll be too sweet.'
There were several different grades and she told me the letter grade and label colour for the right one. Being me, I remembered it all perfectly until I actually found the shelf of pineapple paste, and promptly forgot everything once I was confronted with packets of pineapple paste in a bewildering variety of grades and coloured labels. AA or AAA? Reduced Sugar or Extra Reduced Sugar? The green label or the orange label? What did I say just now, I demanded wildly to the unfortunate friend who had accompanied me. I'm in the throes of uncertainty and self-doubt and I suddenly can't say for sure! Apparently it was infectious. In the end I made an educated guess with the help of a cornered shop assistant.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. I definitely don't fall into the first category at any rate.
The tarts actually turned out quite well, given their unpropitious background. The pastry made with the dubiously French butter was light and delicately, well, buttery. The pineapple paste didn't give anyone diabetes. Besides the fierce Taylor-Swift-lipstick complexion of the tarts--nothing could be done about that--they were actually quite a success, and sufficiently cured me of the Pineapple-Tart-Impossibility-Complex. That is, of course, homemade pineapple paste excluded. There are limits to how much stirring over a hot stove the modern city wimp like myself can take.