The 'Coming of Fortune' Tarts.

Auspicious food is all about luck, money, and prosperity.
Golden nuggets, treasure, having sons, and all.

You'd think by now we'd come up with food that signifies equality, enlightenment, forgiveness, being content, and letting go.

Imagine reunion dinner, you telling a distant aunt to eat prawns because 放下 rhymes with 虾 and she should stop contesting granddad’s will.

But no, after six thousand years of civilization, Cai Shen Dao to Chinese New Year is Michael Buble to Christmas.

We want the god of fortune.

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The only rule I do adhere to is the 'do not clean on the first day of CNY' rule.
Not because I'm afraid of cleaning away my good fortune; I don't clean before or after CNY anyway.

The last thing I expected to do was to bake pineapple tart - supposedly the OG fortune cookies.

When I saw Pamelia's open-faced pineapple tart recipe and thought 'ok I have most ingredients in the fridge, down to one stick of cinnamon'.

Then I saw Victoria Market selling cored pineapple and thought 'ok, the hardest part has been done.'

I won’t be writing recipes, because truth be told if you're making from scratch, you're already a winner.

The supermarket ones use margarine, preservatives, colouring, and melon mixed with pineapples. You know the drill.

So here's my first mistake, I used Pam’s open-face tart recipe to make close-face ones.

Hence my filling to pastry ratio was out of whack.

Also, I suspect due to the open-faced ness, Pam's pastry was crumblier than the closed ones. Perhaps I left the dough in the fridge overnight, I could not bring myself to wrap the filling like a mochi as imagined.

I had to patch 15g of pastry to 6g of filings.

Round two, I googled this recipe based on images just for the pastry, and the key to a more 'pliable' dough is, yes you guessed it, more butter. The cornflour probably helped too.

This time I managed to achieve 9g pastry to 6g filling which I think is a better filling to ratio balance.

I have memories of sandy pineapple tart in my mouth, the type that if I tried to exhale I’d spray paint the room with crumbs.

So I wanted them to be smaller, one mouthful.

If you’ve seen the ingredients, you’d know each mouthful after the first is another step to clogged arteries.

The surprise MVP of the game was condensed milk. (Tube in the fridge says expired 2022 but who cares.)

Pam uses it to introduce a toffee-like flavour to the dough.
The online one used it for the eggwash, giving it a thick gloss.

And speaking of egg wash, both recipes recommended straining them for a more homogenous finish.

Today I learned.

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Jennifer Wong posted a skit beginning with 'What does it mean to be Chinese?'

For me, it's trying to chase some childhood memory, only to realise pineapple tart isn't even Chinese; but Indonesian.
I made nastar.

But you know what, there’s a twist.

Lard.

I replaced 20% total weight of butter with lard.

I don’t see any pineapple tart recipes using that.

Is that Chinese enough for you?

Now, we wait for prosperity to roll in tomorrow.

(Although I'm $30 out of pocket. I have a feeling this auspicious food is just a marketing scam.)

In the end, my wife preferred the big crumbly ones.

My daughter has no interest in either.

Happy Asian New Year to you.