Wednesday, January 29, 2014






Pineapple tarts 2014

It is that time of the year again, where I indulge in my favorite Chinese New Year snack. Come to think of it, this is the only CNY snack that I love and cannot seem to get enough of. I never fail to sample that at every home I visited, especially if they were completely homemade. People usually make their own pastry but settle for commercially made filling. I find commercially made Pineapple filling  too chewy and cannot be compared to freshly prepared homemade filling.

For this year, I added some pork lard to the dough and I have to say, the pastry turned out quite well. In hindsight, I should have done some research into rendering lard first but even though I had not done the rendering correctly, I did get lard that was snow white. Correctly rendered lard is through wet rendering but I missed out on that. Fortunately for me, I started with the frozen fat which helped to lower the rendering temperature. The next time I do some lard rendering, I am going to find myself some leaf lard and do it the correct way.

Now, what should I do with the rest of that lard? Perhaps I should take a leaf(pun intended) from my cousin and do some char kway teow at home.

 Staple Walnut Bread 1kg All purpose flour 800g Water 3 tsp salt 3 tsp yeast Bowl of walnuts Makes two large loaves Mix dry ingredients and ...