Pistachio Matcha Pineapple Tart
This Pistachio Matcha Pineapple Tart is the perfect snack to welcome Chinese New Year. Low sugar and nicely tart pineapple filling housed in a buttery pistachio matcha crust. Nutty yet tart with just a hint of matcha.
Servings: 70 tarts
Ingredients
Dry ingredients
- 100 g pistachios (de-shelled)
- 240 g top flour
- 45 g powdered sugar
- 4 g matcha powder ~ 8/10 tsp
- 4 g salt ~ 3/4 tsp
Wet ingredients
- 240 g cold unsalted butter (cubed)
- 1 egg ~ 50g
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 3 tbsp milk (for the milkwash)
Pineapple Filling
- I used a ready made reduced sugar pineapple paste filling.
- (Check links in notes #4 below)
Instructions
Removing the pistachio skin
- Boil the pistachios in water for approximately 5-10 minutes. Discard the water and transfer the pistachios onto a clean dish towel. Rub the pistachios vigorously within the towel to loosen the skins. Many will be removed. Manually pick off the remaining papery ones which have not come off.
Tart dough
- Blitz the pistachios in the processor until crumb like. Add the flour, sugar, matcha and salt in the food processor and blitz to give it a good mix. Make sure to scrape down the sides and bottom edges so that the pistachio mixes right into the flour. Blitz and repeat several times until you get a beautifully fine pistachio flour.
- Add in the cold butter and pulse the mixture to combine until large crumbs.
- Add in the egg and vanilla extract. Pulse to bind until the crumb mixture comes together and forms large clumps
- At this stage, the tart pastry is done. Gently press the large clumps into a dough ball on parchment paper (note: no kneading required) and set it aside to rest for 1 hour.
Assembly
- Measure and roll out the pineapple filling into 7g balls. Measure and roll out the tart pastry into 10g balls
- Using your fingers, press the dough into a rough circle, place in the filling, seal the dough and gently roll it into a round ball. This tart dough is very malleable, just gently stretch it until the filling is concealed. Once assembled, generously brush milk on each tart before baking.
- Pre-heat the oven to 170C and bake the pineapple tarts at the middle rack for 10 minutes.
- Remove from the oven after 10 minutes and do a 2nd milk wash. Return to the oven @170C and bake for another 10 minutes (Note: The tart does not brown but it will look a nice pistachio green).
- Cool completely. Eat or bottle these delicious pineapple tarts and gift them freshly baked to family and friends. Enjoy.
Video
Notes
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#1 Why Pistachio and Matcha?
Matcha and pistachio has always been a great combination and a favorite of mine. Somehow the slightly bitter matcha is a perfect foil for the earthy sweet pistachio. In this Pistachio Matcha Pineapple Tart, the nutty buttery notes of the pistachio is the 🌟 with just a hint of matcha bringing out that lovely color and adding a subtle matcha nuance to the taste.
If like me, you love the beautiful lush green of this Pistachio Matcha Pineapple Tart, DO NOT SKIP the step of removing the pistachio skin. The skins come off easily once the nuts are given a brisk boil for 5-10 minutes and rubbed vigorously within a towel. Watch the recipe tutorial @0.55 min to see how easily this is done.
#2 Grinding the pistachios
When grinding the pistachios in the food processor, do not let the processor run continuously or the pistachios will start to release too much oil and become pistachio paste. Instead pulse the pistachios a few times so that the nuts are not over-processed and stop once they become crumb like and add in the other dry ingredients.
Take care to scrape down the sides and the bottom edges of the blender well to make sure that the dry ingredients are properly mixed. Be patient to do this several times and the nuts and flour mixture will gradually come together nicely as a beautifully fine pistachio flour, which is perfect for the tart pastry.
#3 Tart dough
The secret of the tart dough is in the butter. Use high quality butter to give the pastry a rich flavor and that melt-in-the-mouth texture. I like to use this French butter.
And always use COLD, COLD, COLD butter. I let the machine do the hard work and used my food processor to pulse the nuts, flour, sugar, butter and salt until it formed crumbs just like rubbing in.
This is possible because the butter is kept cold and hard and can be quickly grated into bits by the processor. Once the egg is added, the small crumbs bind together to form a malleable pastry which is not sticky and can be easily hand moulded. No rolling or kneading is required.
This is an extremely forgiving and easy dough - it is super stretchy and malleable. Even if it breaks, you can simply pinch it back together again. So be fearless and experiment making this Pistachio Matcha Pineapple Tart and you will be amazed how easy it is to handle.
#4 Filling and measurement
You can use pineapple jam made from scratch but I find there are many good quality ready made pineapple fillings sold at bake shops during this period. Finding the right ready made filling to your preference is a real time-saver & pathfinder to baking quick and delicious pineapple tarts.
I found mine at Phoon Huat. For this Pistachio Matcha Pineapple Tart, I used their Redman brand reduced sugar pineapple paste filling as I needed to control sugar level for my octogenarian parents who love CNY pineapple tarts! I also like the Redman premium quality pineapple jam filling which is nicely tart and more importantly, also not too sweet which I used to make my MIL’s Yummy Pineapple Tart. The jam texture of both fillings is suitably chewy soft and not gummy.
When it comes to measurement, if you are OCD like me and each tart must be exactly the same size, you will find it helpful to have a digital baking scale.I measured 7g filling to 10g dough pastry per tart. IMHO, this makes the perfect mouthful when you pop the whole tart all at once 🈵 🈵 😬 If you like more filling, by all means switch it up to 8-9g, 10g of dough pastry should still work as this tart pastry is very flexible.
This recipe yields about ~700g of tart pastry which means one will get about 70 pineapple tarts from one batch. But be warned, they disappear very quickly!
#5 Milk wash vs Egg wash
When I first tested this recipe, I did my usual egg wash which is what gives the pineapple tart that lovely golden crown. But please … DO NOT EGG WASH this Pistachio Matcha Pineapple Tart. In this case, the egg wash was a total FAIL as it completely blighted the beautiful pistachio green color and instead baked it brown 🙅🏻♀️🙅🏻♀️
Thankfully success came with a milk wash on my third attempt. Be sure to brush milk generously on each tart before baking and do another repeat after ten minutes of baking. The milk allows the tart to bake well and keeps the beautiful pistachio matcha color intact. (Check out the photo difference in the blog post).
As milk was more fluid than egg, I was initially hesitant to brush on too much milk and as a result, my first batch of Ptarts had a couple of slightly cracked tops. After many subsequent batches, I realized a generous milk wash keeps the tart pastry moist and allows it to bake well with little or no cracking in high heat.
So be confident and milk wash exuberantly!
#6 Make ahead
Th tart dough is a great make ahead. I usually make 2 to 3 batches of the dough all at once and keep it chilled in the fridge. I assemble and bake the pineapple tarts one to two days before I gift them to friends and family so that they are always received, freshly made! The dough keeps well, chilled for a week. Just take it out of the refrigerator and let it soften to room temperature (~30min) before use.
Yup it’s Chinese New Year and you too will never just make one batch of these Ptarts as they disappear ever so quickly with many self proclaimed tasters suddenly passing through the kitchen! So make your dough ahead and have fun making this Pistachio Matcha Pineapple Tart!