Blueberry Tart

this blueberry tart was made for jason's birthday which we celebrated few weeks ago. i chanced upon this linzer tart recipe in alex goh's irresistible pastry cookbook and decided to tweak it a little by replacing the raspberry jam with blueberry pie filling :)


i'm pretty satisfied with the results. the pastry turned out great - very fragrant and yummy :)
and i added some pine nuts into the pastry dough haha. something interesting as well!


Blueberry Tart
Adapted from Alex Goh's Linzer Tart

Ingredients:
Pastry:
150g butter
75g icing sugar
1 egg
250g flour
70g ground almonds
30g pine nuts
pinch of ground cinnamon

Filling:
Blueberry Pie filling

Method:
1. Mix butter and sugar until well blended. Add in egg and cream until smooth.
2. Add in flour, ground almonds, pine nuts and ground cinnamon and mix till well incorporated. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes until firm.
3. Take the pastry out from the fridge and knead it lightly until smooth.
4. Roll it between 2 sheets of plastic wrap to 3-mm thickness. Line a greased 9-in pie mould with the rolled pastry.
5. Pour the blueberry pie filling onto the pastry dough.
6. Roll the trimming pastry between 2 sheets of plastic wrap to 2-mm thickness. Cut the strips into about 1-cm wide. Place them on top of the blueberry filling to form a lattice pattern.
7. Egg wash the pastry and bake at 190 deg C for 30 mins or until golden brown.

More Pineapple Tarts!

my final CNY bakes :) made more covered pineapple tarts but this time the design of the tarts is much simpler. just roll it up into a ball and press down with a fork!

egg wash

all done:)

Mousey Pineapple Tarts

have a mousey lunar new year!

it's the year of the rat come this lunar new year! haha came across aunty yochana's blog where she created the golden mouse pineapple tarts. they were so cute! so i drew inspiration from her and created mine too :D

but mine just doesn't seem to look like a mouse! haha some think they look more like pigs!!! enjoy the pics :)

used black sesame seeds for the eyes. then created the ears and tails by using scissors to cut some dough out.

my platoon of mice :P thanks to sis who helped me out!

preparing the pineapple filling from scratch was sheer hard work. i made them the night before and my arms ached just from de-skinning and grating of the pineapples. and i stood awake in the middle of the night stirring and cooking the grated pineapple filling.

my version is less sweet cos i didn't add much sugar. i think the natural sweetness of the pineapples would suffice :) and it's healthier too!

going to let cblc peepz try some on mon! so far feedback has been good :)

haha i wanna laugh when i see this.
yea they really look like pigs!

Pineapple Tarts

pen and paper ready to record down the step-by-step recipe!

his mama was kind enough to pass me her secret recipe for pineapple tarts which he is so full of praise for. haha and she showed me the whole process personally :) and yea it's yummy! it's the covered up kind which is rarely seen nowadays and the pineapple filling wasn't too sweet at all.

and guess what. we baked them on the night straight after night cycling. imagine how shag the two of us were! but many hands make light work! it took the three of us about 3 hours to finally get to savour our first bite...and those 3 hours included the cooking of the freshly grated pineapple too! see the pic on the left.

see those anxious hands of his ready to attack the flour mixture! in the end he got pushed away cos he didn't know how to knead properly haha.

so many hands!!!

ta-da! buttery dough-like thingy.

we actually 'toasted' them in an oven toaster cos the oven wasn't working. haha so some turned out burnt but could still be eaten. brought the remaining ingredients home to bake cos i had to rush to take the last bus! they turned out in a lovely golden colour when i baked them in my oven :)

hmmm do they resemble pineapples? he says they look more like beetle insect! all ended up in his stomach anyway! haha. we actually use a pair of scissors to cut those flaps out. then egg wash to get the nice colour.

Chocolate Tarts With Pine Nuts

made some sweet pastry tart bases last friday to make fruit tarts for grandma's 70th birthday celebration on saturday. haha kooped some out to make chocolate tarts for him. i like the flower petals design created with the pine nuts. quite creative ya :)

i love nuts. they're so versatile!

we had his pd treat at chinatown temporary market that friday. haha but there were only six of us in total. just nice one table. one table but there was soooo much food - 2 fish head, i super big claypot rice, and two plates of vegetables!

i just completed a task assigned by bean! shall post that up soon :)

Here's the recipe...

Chocolate Tarts with Pine Nuts

Sweet Pastry Recipe
Adapted from Alex Goh's Irresistable Pastry.

Ingredients:
200g Butter
85g icing sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
420g flour, sifted
1 tbsp milk powder

Method:
1.Cream butter, sugar and vanilla essence lightly and add in the egg. Cream until smooth.
2. Add in flour and milk powder. Mix till well blended.
3. Press into tart mould.
4. Bake at 200 deg C for 10-12 minutes.
*Weight of pastry is 780g.

Choc Filling Recipe
Adapted from She Paints the Kitchen Red's Tarte Noire.

225g bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup plus 2 tbsp whipping cream
45g butter, cut into small pieces, at room temperature
A handful of pine nuts

Method:
1. Place the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl and have a whisk at hand. Bring the cream to a boil, then pour half of it over the chocolate and let it sit for 30 seconds. Working with the whisk, gently stir the chocolate and cream together in small circles, starting at the centre of the bowl and working your way out.

2. Pour in the remainder of the cream and blend it into the chocolate, using the same circular motion. When the ganache is smooth and shiny, stir in the butter piece by piece. don’t stir the ganache any more than you must to blend the ingredients. The less you work it, the darker, smoother and shinier it will be.

3. Pour the ganache into the crust. Decorate with some pine nuts. Refrigerate the tart to let the ganache set.

Fruit Tarts With Custard

we had a mini gathering on christmas eve at cblc. haha a really mini one - i think there were only less than ten of us...bean, chingman, kengboon, lungkwan, me, him, caine, violet, tengyong. anyway it was potluck so each of us had to prepare something!

initially i was given the task of baking a x'mas log cake but then i realised it's really quite ma fan and i wasn't really confident of doing it myself! haha never tried it before...so i should experiment with it myself some other day!

with that, i flipped the recipe books for a suitable cake/pastry to bake. and ta-da i found one on strawberry tart with custard and another one - mango tart. decided on the one with custard since he prefers that. but i modified the recipe a bit, used the sweet pastry for smaller tarts and i used mangoes and longans instead of strawberries.

as i was flipping thru the food blogs again(!) haha i found so many other interesting recipes which i so wanted to try! but had to think about time constraint and budget so i decided on the mua chee and waffles which were both simple to prepare.

wahhhh the fruit tart was ALOT of work! i think i spent almost half a day preparing it! from the sweet pastry to the custard to the fruits and then the glazing, everything took time! it was fun making the pastry though. my first time doing it but i'm glad it was successful and nice according to those who tried it! and it was a good experience making it!

preparing the moulds

Sweet pastry in the making...

yay done! these could have been more 'baked' i think!

Then the custard...

you add this to a custard powder and egg mixture to get a rather gluey-like custard


apply the glaze and ta-da...ermm not very pretty fruits tarts hahaha!

Part II - Mua Chee!

the healthier mua chee made with lesser oil so the texture wasn't that smooth. but it's as good as those you find at pasar malam okaes! looks good right :)

Part III - Waffles

hot waffles made on the spot! then topped with vanilla and raspberry ice-cream :)