鳳梨酥 — Print Recipe — The Culinary Codex

Buttery, crumbly shortcrust pastry encasing a golden, sweet-tart pineapple jam filling — Taiwan's most famous souvenir and a bite-sized masterpiece of baking precision.

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter, softened
60g powdered sugar
2 egg yolks
30g milk powder
200g all-purpose flour
60g almond flour
Pinch of salt
Filling: 400g fresh pineapple, finely chopped
100g sugar
1 tbsp maltose
1 tbsp lemon juice
20g butter

Instructions

1 Make filling: cook chopped pineapple with sugar, maltose, and lemon juice over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 40-50 minutes until thick and jammy. Stir in butter. Cool completely.
2 Cream softened butter with powdered sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks one at a time.
3 Sift in flour, almond flour, milk powder, and salt. Mix until just combined into a soft dough. Chill 30 minutes.
4 Divide dough into 12 portions (about 25g each). Roll filling into 12 balls (about 20g each).
5 Flatten each dough portion, wrap around a filling ball, and seal. Place seam-side down in pineapple cake molds.
6 Bake at 170°C (340°F) for 25-30 minutes until golden. Cool in molds before removing. Best after resting 1 day.

Did You Know?

Taiwan produces over $400 million worth of pineapple cakes annually, and the pastry is so culturally significant that "Sunny Hills" brand sparked a revolution in 2008 by using 100% pineapple filling instead of the traditional wintermelon-pineapple blend.