Singapore Style Pineapple Tarts - cooking recipe

Ingredients

Filling
4 fresh pineapple
400 g caster sugar
4 cm piece cinnamon sticks
1 star anise, use 4 segments
4 cloves
2 tablespoons lemon juice or 2 tablespoons lime juice
Crust
340 g plain flour
340 g cake flour
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons icing sugar
450 g butter, cubed (Lurpak is great)
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
50 ml ice water
2 beaten eggs, for glaze

Preparation

Filling.
To make the jam, grate the pineapple coarsely.
Combine the grated pineapple with the rest of the ingredients in a heavy-based saucepan and cook over a moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until mixture is almost dry.
Set aside to cool.
Pastry dough.
Put sifted flour, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl.
Rub in butter until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Beat in the egg yolk and add ice-cold water and essence.
Mix well to form a dough.
Place in a plastic bag and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Roll pastry out to 0.5 cm thickness on a lightly-floured tabletop and cut out rounds with a pie cutter.
Fill each piece of cut-out pastry with pineapple jam filling.
Pinch a small neat frill aroud the edging.
Cut thin strips of pastry to form a lattice on top of each pie.
Glaze the strips with beaten egg.
Place tarts on a greased baking tray and bake in preheated oven at 180\u00b0C for 15 minutes.
Reduce the temperature to 170\u00b0C and continue to bake for another 10 minutes or until golden.
Turn tarts out to cool on a wire rack before storing in air-tight containers.