Pineapple Cookies

For Chinese New Year I wanted to make something a little out of my comfort zone. I’ve never cooked a dessert with pineapple before (not even an upside down cake). But this is a pretty traditional Chinese New Year treat and I wanted to give it a try! Hope you like it.

Difficulty: easy
Print

Ingredients

Pineapple Jam Filling

1 20 oz can, crushed pineapple
¾ cup sugar
1 t lemon juice
1/8 t cinnamon
1/8 t ground cloves

Dough

1 ½ cups flour
4 T powdered sugar
1 T cornstarch
1/8 t salt
½ cup butter, brought to room temperature
2 t vanilla, separated
2 egg yolks, separated
2 t pineapple juice, separated (saved from the crushed pineapple in the filling)

Directions

We’ll start with making the filling, then the dough, then we’ll put everything together.

First, drain the crushed pineapple and set aside a teaspoon and a half of the juice for the dough – you can discard the rest. Or drink it – no judgement here.

Next, put the drained pineapple in a blender and run for about 15 seconds, to break it down a bit.

Pour the pineapple into a saucepan and add the sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon and cloves. Heat on low to medium low heat for about a half hour, stirring regularly, until the mixture has thickened nicely. Remove it from the heat and let it cool.

While it’s cooling you can start on the dough.

Add the flour, powdered sugar, corn starch and salt to a large bowl and whisk together until well combined.

Next, add in the butter, 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla, 1 egg yolk and 1 1/2 teaspoons of the pineapple juice. Mix well until everything is combined – this is your dough!

Line a couple baking sheets with parchment paper and roll the dough into balls about the size of ping pong balls, placing them on the sheets, six balls to a sheet.

Flatten out the dough balls with the palm of your hand so that each one is a flat disk.

Take a small amount of filling and place it in the center of each disk. Fold the edges of the disk around the filling and then roll it in your hands to create a ball.

Take a fork and make a criss-cross pattern across the top of each ball.

Then, in a small bowl add the remaining egg yolk, the remaining half teaspoon of vanilla and the remaining half teaspoon of pineapple juice and whisk until well combined.

Brush the tops of all the cookies with this egg wash.

Bake at 325 for about 17-20 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies are a nice golden brown, and the bottoms are starting to brown.

Remove the baking sheet from the oven and let the cookies cool on the sheets for about 10 minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.