Nyonya Pineapple Tarts

Ingredients

• 2 medium ripe pineapples, about 1.6 kg of flesh
• 220 g caster sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 star anise
• 4 cloves
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 300 g plain flour
• 30 g cornflour
• 30 g milk powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 220 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 tbsp ice-cold water
• 1 egg yolk, for glazing
• 1 tsp milk, for glazing

Before you cook

• Peel and core the pineapples, then grate the flesh coarsely and keep every drop of juice.
• Rub the plain flour, cornflour, milk powder, salt and cold butter together with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs.
• Stir in the two egg yolks and the ice-cold water and bring the dough together without kneading it.
• Wrap the dough and chill it for thirty minutes.
• Beat the remaining egg yolk with the milk for the glaze.

Steps

1. Put the grated pineapple and its juice into a wide, heavy pan over medium heat.
2. Add the cinnamon stick, star anise and cloves.
3. Cook the pineapple for thirty minutes, stirring now and then, until most of the liquid has boiled away.
4. Stir in the sugar and lower the heat.
5. Cook for a further thirty to forty minutes, stirring almost constantly towards the end, until the jam is dark amber, sticky and pulls away from the base of the pan in a single mass.
6. Stir in the lime juice and fish out the whole spices.
7. Spread the jam on a tray and leave it to cool completely.
8. Roll the cooled jam into small balls of about eight grams each.
9. Heat the oven to 170C.
10. Roll the chilled pastry out between two sheets of baking paper to a thickness of five millimetres.
11. Cut the pastry into strips about two centimetres wide and seven centimetres long.
12. Sit a ball of jam at one end of a strip and roll the pastry around it, leaving the jam showing at both ends.
13. Set the tarts on a lined baking tray, spaced two centimetres apart.
14. Brush the pastry lightly with the egg yolk glaze.
15. Bake the tarts for eighteen to twenty minutes, until the pastry is pale gold and the bases are set.
16. Cool the tarts on the tray for ten minutes before moving them, as they are very fragile while hot.
17. Store them in an airtight tin, where they keep for two weeks.