Living for Fridays, barely..: Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is the FIRST DAY of Chinese New Year!!

Let me wish one and all a new year filled with abundance - of wealth, of health, of luck and of food!! It's the year of the Pig afterall!!! Oink oink!

Every year, I create a CNY greeting for all my friends by making Chewie pose for me. Well, for this year's creation - I made Chewie sit & "stay", surrounded by new year goodies. One of the boxes fell and gave her a shock of her life! And it was pretty hard to make her come back to her position again... Poor thing, I'm always forcing her to do stuff :P hee hee...

And CNY is also the time for pineapple tarts. I don't quite trust the ones on sale. Besides, the price is always quite exorbitant. So I always make my own...

This year, we had lots of preparation to do, so it's only one batch with 3 pineapples.

Here's the recipe in case anyone wants to try it.

Pastry Ingredients
1 cup plain floor
1 cup self raising floor
150g butter (SCS is best)
1 egg (beaten)
2 tbsp (or more) Cold water (must be COLD!!)
a little salt

Pineapple Jam Ingredients
2 cups grated pineapple
1½ cups granulated sugar
4 cloves

Put the pineapple jam ingredients into a saucepan and bring to the boil over a slow fire. Stir constantly until the sugar is dissolved and the jam is thick. (This is the most troublesome part as you need to keep stirring and stirring so that the pineapple does not stick to the saucepan.) Stop before it becomes too dark. Remove from heat and allow to cool. I usually allow it to cool overnight and refridgerate it.

The dough is best done in a cool room with cool fingers.

Sift the floor and salt into a mixing bowl. Rub in butter lightly with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Make a well in the centre of the mixture. Pour in the beaten egg and cold water. Bind the ingredients together gently. Do not knead too much. Be sure to use fingertips.

Sprinkle a little flour over the pastry board and roll out the pastry thinly. Cut pastry with a pineapple cutter.