CNY cookies- Pineapple tarts

This is my favourite pineapple tart receipe. Have been making them for the past few years, and the girls seem to like them. Blossom has been requesting them to be packed in her lunchbox for her recess in school.

The receipe, adapted from Oi Lin as follows:

• 280g butter (cold)
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 360g plain flour
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 450g pineapple filling (i bought ready-made ones)
• egg glaze: 1 egg yolk with 5 drops of water

Method:

1. Sift flour (I omitted this step) and sugar. Mix well
2. Cut the butter into small cubes and add to the flour mixture
3. Use fingertips to rub the butter into the flour.
4. Beat the egg yolks and add vanilla essence. Pour them into the butter mixture. Knead to form a dough. Wrap the dough in clingwrap and chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
5. Pinch about 1/2 tablespoon of pineapple paste and roll into a ball. Similarly pinch about 1/2 tablespoon of dough. Wrap the ball with the dough.
6. In a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, place the balls with some spacing in between.
7. Brush egg glaze over the top of the balls.
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 190 deg celsius for about 15 minutes

The texture of the tart is really melt-in-the mouth. The smell of the butter when the tarts are in the bake is truly heavenly. We like our pineapple tarts closed as it retains most of the moisture in the tart.

I am submitting this to the Aspiring Bakers #3: My Favourite CNY cookie (January 2011), hosted by J3ss Kitch3n

Wishing everyone a lucky and prosperous Lunar New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

What a hiatus!

Happy New Year 2011! Time, subconsiously amidst our busy-ness, passes by without our noticing. Ironically, it is only when we stand still and relook back that we alarming realise that it is another year (and my white hair strands coming out) But good things also deserve our notice - my girls have grown (Blossom's height is now at my shoulder).

Didn't realise that it has been such a long while since I last wrote or posted a photo. Lost the passion at some times. Things caught up. Or I was caught up.

Enough of the procrastinating. I have given the blog a new skin and look!

Notwithstanding the above, I have done a few things for my loved ones during the 'hiatus'. Let's rewind the clock :)

Mid-Autumn Festival

Went for a course with my fren L. It taught us how to make the baked mooncake as well as the snowskin one. We had a good time at the course and also during our search for the best mooncake filling that brought us to the east side of the island. I only managed to try the snowskin one at home. I loved the moulds.

Trip to Hong Kong

We went for a short trip over the National Day holiday. The egg tarts were truly delicious!
Christmas

No creative juices flowed when I had to put down what to bring for my Buttercup's Xmas party in the childcare centre. It was a repeat item (from 2008). But I think the kids liked the colours and the cute edible icing figurines.

Last year i did egg-boats for them:

Cookies for my colleagues:
And Gingerbread men done by my 3 girls:

Ad hoc items:

Avocado mousse tart

I think i overbeat the whipping cream, resulting in the specks on the mousse, sigh. But the taste was creamy, a pity the girls didn't like avocado.

Cookies!

Two recent cookie bakes:

1) Chocoloate Chip cookies
My gals' favourite. I really love the smell when they are baking!

2) Peanut cookies
Made from ground peanuts rather than peanut butter. More crunch. I found it a tad too sweet, coz I only realised that the ground peanuts I bought already had some sugar included. But my hubby said it was alright.

Peanut Sandies

Had some time on my hands this morning at home, while waiting for the aircon repairman. This is an easy-peasy (a phrase used very often by my 2 older gals) receipe for a cookie. Not really a cookie, more a melt-in-the-mouth crumble. The texture is pretty similar to those round ones we get during Chinese New Year.

Receipe (adapted from Ovenhaven's blog)

1 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter

1 cup flour

1 cup light brown sugar

Preheat oven to 180C.
Place everything in a large bowl and mix

Using your hands, roll about a tablespoon of dough into a ball. Place on baking tray lined with parchment paper and flatten slightly with a fork (to make the infamous dent that appears on all peanut butter cookie).

Bake for about 8mins. Leave to cool for about 5 mins.

It is really crumbly in nature. Will consider making it even smaller next time so that my little gals can pop one right into their mouth without having to bite it. As said b4, I really do not like to see the crumbs on the table :P

Cupcakes and such

Here's last night's bake: Cupcakes in various flavours (vanilla, double chocolate, chocolate chips; coffee, orange)

It is still the Chinese New Year, and there are still goodies in the kitchen. This year I also made cornflake cookies, which the children loved. Even their daddy liked it (I think) coz he finished everything in one night.

This zebra cake (more marble cake) was done long time back but didn't get the chance to post it.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Was in the mood for baking last night. After dinner and the washing up, i set off quietly into my "escapade" in the kitchen. Usually I try to sneak around in the kitchen when I am preparing the ingredients, if not once the Powerpuff gals storm in, it is really chaotic and difficult to get things organised. :P

Tried out this Chocolate Chip Cookie receipe from Aunty Yochana. It is definitely a keeper. DH took a bite and said that this was the one! He had been trying to tell me to bake "that" cookie that I had done last year, as he said it was really good. Finally got the cookie that he likes! This is a little crunchy yet melt in the mouth. The gals sniffed out that I was up to something in the kitchen and in no time, they took their kiddo chairs into the kitchen to join in the action. Look at Buttercup having a great time. Her smile says it all! Not bad for a 3-year old - she is an accomplished "mixer"
Today, most schools celebrate Teachers' Day. Packed some of the cookies into the goody bags for my gals' teachers. Thanks so much for being so tolerant to my gals! Esp the kind teachers at the daycare centre. Happy Teachers' Day!

Watermelon cookies

Blossom and Bubbles did not have school yesterday. We had a beary good breakfast of ham and cheese sandwich! They were cut in the shapes of bears.

The afternoon was long, I always think so when I am home. Inspired by Pure Enjoyment's success at baking watermelon cookies, and since the two gals were restless, I promised them to make some too. They were really excited about getting to knead dough again. I was more worried about the cleaning up. Blossom can now read recipes for me, and it was a good opportunity for her to learn the different types of measurements, scales and ingredients. She was pretty good at telling me what the ingredients we have to get and the next step to do.

The making of the watermelon cookies were pretty tedious. The dough had to be divided into three portions and two portions were coloured red and green. The red ball of dough had to be wrapped in uncoloured dough, then afterwhich wrapped in green dough. It was a little difficult feat for my gals, so I ended up doing most of the wrapping. But they had fun cutting up the doughball into 6 pieces of "watermelon" and putting the "seeds" on.

Here is the result:

I thought the colour looked really lovely after the baking. The rough surfaces really made it looked like a real watermelon wedge.

Here's the tray of dough before it was sent into the oven.
Blossom and Bubbles had even more fun eating the cookies. When Buttercup came home from daycare, she was served some cookies. And she asked for seconds. And she asked for somemore even during dinnertime.

Cookie Baking Class

My girls are very interested in baking too. Perhaps they treat it the same way as playdough but with an added gift at the end of it all - they get to eat their creations!


Look at them having a good time at their cookie baking class. I thought I wanted to know how messy or chaotic they would get if they played with dough (the real dough). What better way to try it out at a class rather than own kitchen :P But they did suprisingly well and were so behaved. Maybe it was because there was a instructor standing by!










It just brings me so much pleasure to see their smile of satisfaction when the final product came out of the oven!