Pineaple Tarts

With just two weeks to go before the Lunar New Year, most Chinese families are now busy doing Spring cleaning and baking cookies.

The significance, or symbolism of the Spring cleaning is easy to understand. It’s ‘out with the old and in with the new’. Time to give the house a top to bottom wipe and clean out – to throw out stuff that are old and unusable/unused and replace them with new ones - if necessary. A clean start to a sparkling new year. That's the idea.

As children, we looked forward to Chinese New Years. It is the biggest day in the Chinese calendar. We get to dress up in our best, and there’s plenty of lovely food and sweets to eat. However, I am at the age now where thinking of the coming event makes me tired. There is so much to do, and I would be glad when it is all over – the sooner, the better.

Chinese New Year is a time of feasting. Friends and relatives visit each other to spend some time together and to catch up with what has happened over the past year. There will be hearty meals and a lot of snacking – sweets and cookies in between. I guess it is very similar to Christmas and the Western New Year.

Anyway, yesterday (Sunday), I helped my sister bake some pineapple tarts. Pineapple tarts are sort of a ‘must have’ item during Chinese New Year. The Chinese pronunciation of pineapple rhythms with ‘bountiful prosperity’. So, all things pineapple – even decorative items are in demand.

I am not really interested in baking. So, I didn’t do much actually, just helping out with a bit of chores here and there.

The baking went well, and my sister was pleased with the results. So, that’s one thing out of the way. Next week, I will be helping her bake beehive cookies. Stay tuned.

Some photos of the baking process. I don’t have the recipe – sorry! But, no worries, there are plenty of them on the net.

The dough. I think the ingredients are pretty basic - flour, eggs, sugar and water.

Pineapple paste. My sister used to make them fresh. But that is just too much work and time consuming. She resisted the idea of ready-made pineapple paste until last year. She tried them and found that they were all right. So, she continues to use them this year.

My job was to knead them into small pineapple balls.

Pineapple tarts baking in the oven.

Airing them. Letting them cool down.

Packing them into a container where they will remain until the big day. Of course, someone might be tempted to pinch one or two to eat before then.

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