Rolled Pineapple Tarts

Pineapple tarts is one of my all-time favourite cookies. It's a must for Deepavali and I make it every year. My sis, mum and hubby love it but not my kids. However last Sunday I bought a bottle of jam tarts from a friend. To my surprise my second son started eating the tarts and could not put the bottle down. He was a bit upset that I just bought a bottle. I told him I will make some for him since I always like to cook and bake for my family. So I googled a couple of recipes and made this one up. I like the pastry to be a bit firm, not hard and not the melt-in-your mounth type. The jam should also be a little soft so that both the pastry and the jam complement each other. I will bake this later and let us see if this recipe turns out the way I want the rolled tarts to be.

Ingredients

250g butter, at room temperature
50g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 egg yolks

100g custard powder ( I am planning to use 50g of corn flour and 50g of custard powder)
375g all purpose flour
2 tbps milk powder or condensed milk

egg yolk for glazing (I normally use the whites and add a drop of egg yellow colouring and a drop of vanilla essence- works the same in my opinion) 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2, Sift all pupose flour, corn flour, custard powder and milk powder.
3. In a bowl beat butter and icing sugar together for a 1-2 minutes
4. Beat in the egg yolks, essence and condensed milk (if using this instead of the milk powder)
5. Fold in the flour and mix until you get a soft dough.
6. Pipe the dough out using the jam tarts mould.
7. Place a jam on one edge of the pastry and roll the dough over. Cut the pastry where at the
    point the pastry covers the jam. You can also overlap the pastry a bit.
7. Glaze with egg wash and bake for about 20 minutes.
8. Cool and store in an airtight container.

Melt-In-Your-Mouth Peanut Cookies

Ingredients

200g roasted peanuts - grind until fine
200g red rose flour/ all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
100g icing sugar
1/4 tsp fine salt (blend with some flour from the 200g of flour)
100g peanut/corn ould

Egg wash:
1 egg yolk mixed with 1 tsp of water

Directions

1. Sift flour, salt, baking powder and icing sugar together.
2. Add in the ground peanuts and mix well.
3. pour in the peanut/corn oil and essence and mix until well. If mixture is too crumbly, add a
    little more oil. Dough should be soft enough to form a ball when rolled between your palms
4. Roll cookie dough into small balls and place it on a baking tray.
5. Brush cookies with egg wash and bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes or until the bottom of the cookie is slighlty brown.

Makmur Cookies / Biskut Makmur

This is another great cookie that both my husband and I love. My husband's colleague used to make these cookies and we used to buy these cookies from her. After she left the company, I decided to try making these cookies myself. I put this recipe together after reviewing a couple of recipes on the net and it turned out quite good and quite close to the one my husband's colleage used to make.

Ingredients

Sift together:
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour / rose flour
1/2 cup custard powder
1/2 tsp fine salt (take a little flour and blend it together so that the salt gets powdered)

100g butter, at room temperature
100g ghee
1 egg yolk
1/3 cup icing sugar

1 cup roasted peanuts - ground roughly
1/2 cup castor sugar
some corn oil or condensed milk to bind the peanuts and sugar together

Directions

1.   Preheat oven to 180 C.
2.   Mix butter and ghee together. Just mix for under a minute.
3.   Mix in the egg yolk followed by the icing sugar.
4.   Slowly add in sifted dry ingredients (flour, custard powder, salt)
5.   Mix until everything is well combined. You can add a bit more ghee or butter until you get a  
      soft dough.
6.   In a separate bowl, mix together the ground peanuts, sugar and oil/condensed milk. take
      about 1 tsp of peanut and form into an oval shape.
7.   Take a little dough (1/2 tbsp) and form a ball. Flatten the ball and add in the peanut that was
      formed into oval shapes. Close the dough around the peanut to conceal the peanut.
8.   Shape the cookie into ovals and pinch the top of the cookie to make it look like a leaf.
9.   Bake for about 20 minutes or until the bottom is slightly brown.
10. Once the cookies are cool. Dust with icing sugar and store it.

Enjoy!!!