Experimenting with Pineapple Tarts

This year I am daring enough to try the tedious pineapple tarts. Grated and cooked my own pineapple jam some more. Took me a while to get the right texture even for the jam. The first time I did it, it was too wet and light. So I added a little more of the reserved pineapple juice and cooked an additional 1.5 hours. That's a total of about 5 hours to get the "golden" jam. Pauline told me for completely wrapped pineapple tarts, the jam has to be drier than the open faced ones.

Today I baked my first batch of tarts. As with all new recipe I tried, it's more of an experiment rather than baking. I did the dough yesterday night and left it covered in the fridge.

The first batch I only bake 3 tarts (following the suggested temperature and timing), knowing that there's s high chance this batch will not be the perfect one. True enough, the tarts turn out too crunchy, like a cookie. That's not what I was looking for.

The second batch I adjusted my temperature to be lower (around 160-170 degC). This was from my Melting Moments experience. I let the cookies bake for about 10 minutes then brush them with egg wash and bake again. The result is no good. The face of the tarts are totally rough and ugly. No melting effect too. So wrong again.

The last batch was the best, though not perfect yet. I bake them at about 150-160 degC for about 18 mins. This batch I brush them with egg wash at the beginning, before the baking.



The imperfections in this batch are:
- The color is still too light, not golden at all.
- The melt-in-the-mouth effect is not strong enough, though better than the earlier ones.

I am suspecting it could be because I change the sugar to icing sugar. So till now, I have not master the perfect melt-in-the-mouth pineapple tarts yet. I've left half of the dough and jam in the fridge to try again next week. Hopefully I will have some clues soon.

Mood: Deep in thoughts...