Baking Pineapple Tarts Starts With Cooking The Pineapple Jam

A few friends were looking to buy some homemade pineapple tarts, so I decided to bake and sell some while keeping some for own consumption. The pineapple jam and dough are critical in making yummy pineapple tarts.

During my mum's time, she would cook the jam herself to make the tarts to sell to relatives and friends. This is what I really call, HOMEMADE!!! Over the years, more and more people started to sell pineapple tarts and claimed that they were homemade but to unsuspecting people, they might not realise that not all of these tarts were truly 100% homemade! Would you consider pineapple tarts homemade if only the dough part was homemade? Some home bakers probably don't even know how to make pineapple jam or have ever attempted to make it. I have tried making my own jam, starting with peeling the pineapples, removing the eyes, grating it the traditional way (not using a blender) and cooking it. It takes a few hours to complete the whole process.

For me, in order to sell, the quality of ingredients used has to be of certain standard. Butter has to use premium brands like SCS or President; there could be more brands but I have only tried these 2 brands, so citing these 2 brands as examples. SCS has been a well known brand since my mum's time, she only uses SCS for her baking. As for the pineapple jam, I would not use ready made jam selling in Phoon Huat and NTUC. Do you know what goes in to the jam to preserve it so that it can last? I don't know and don't wish to know, but highly unlikely that natural preservatives would be used. Also, sometimes I don't find that the jam has fibres or a natural pineapple aroma in it. Hence, I didn't sell any pineapple tarts for past years as I'm lazy to cook the jam, haha... I did bake some tarts using a more premium pineapple jam but even then, I'm also not so sure about the preservatives, so the tarts were for own consumption and also as treats for friends. This year, I saw Baking's Corner selling the jam. I trust Fiona, founder of Baking's Corner, that the jam would be cooked by herself or her team, and that no artificial preservatives would be used. It would still be homemade per se, just that it's not homemade by me, haha... I texted the person in-charge of selling the jam to confirm that the jam would be cooked by themselves and artificial preservatives were not used. Hence, I gotten hubby to make a trip down to buy 2 tubs of the jam.

I tasted the jam when hubby came back. It's towards a more sour taste. While I'm fine with it and my girl likes it (she ate it as jam with bread, that explained the missing 1/5 from 1kg of the jam), my friends who ordered the tarts from me would prefer a sweeter taste. I'm not at all surprised, guys tend to prefer sweeter taste for the jam whereas ladies generally can take more sour taste. Does that mean this jam would go to waste? Nope! It's sold at $9/kg, definitely not cheap if you compared to those that one could buy from Phoon Huat or NTUC, how can waste it sia... Well, the jam can be salvaged! I'll just need to buy a few pineapples, add to the jam and cook again to make it sweeter and slightly more moist since I plan to do open face type for this sweeter version. Fortunately, I know how to cook the jam myself. I'll just make a tub sweeter to tailor to my customers' taste. As for the other tub, I'll leave it slightly more sour and do the close type; I find the jam on the drier side, which is better for making the close type. Making the tarts open face and close type also help to differentiate the sour and sweeter version, which I could pass some of the sour ones to my friends aka customers to sample to compare the 2 versions.

Now, I need to look for pineapples to buy, haha...