Family Pineapple Tart Tradition: A Childhood Memory Baked into New Year's

I have this childhood memory of my ahyi, amongst the great fondness I have for kitchen bonding. Before each new year, the blue-tiled counter would brim with all kinds of ingredients and bubbling pots. She would enclose each ball of jam with a circle of dough and it would be my job to use the little metal scissors to snip the quills of the hedgehog before pinching a nose and adding little clove eyes. Then they would all be egg-washed in rows, baked and rested in clear tins to be given away.

I wasn’t going to make pineapple tarts this year but Wes and Kate asked to make them, so ... we did. It was so lovely spending time teaching them the familiar steps, watching the OG read to the little girls and if I say so myself, the tarts we make at home have such thin, short crusts and deep, flavourful, spicy jam, they are so unctuously good!