What is a Taiwanese Pineapple Cake?
Visitors to Taiwan will likely have enjoyed pineapple cakes 鳳梨酥, which are widely sold and enjoyed throughout the year. Pineapple cakes are typically square or rectangular, with a jammy pineapple filling encased in a tender short crust pastry. As such, Taiwanese pineapple cakes fall somewhere between a filled cookie or biscuit and a hand pie; not what we commonly think of as cake.
The pineapple filling is sometimes embellished with nuts, sometimes with morsels of salted egg yolk – probably an acquired taste! The pineapple cakes are usually packaged individually and sold in beautiful, sturdy gift boxes for safe transport.
If you have brought back pineapple cakes from your trip to Taiwan for friends and family, you have not only given them something delicious to eat but also your wishes for good luck. In Hokkien, a widely spoken Chinese dialect in Taiwan, pineapple has the same pronunciation as “luck arrives” 運來. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the immense popularity of these cakes in Taiwan. The third Chinese word in the name of these treats, 酥, is a generic term for pastries with a high fat content, whether the pastry is flaky or short, baked or deep fried.
Making Taiwanese Pineapple Cakes at Home
I became interested in learning to make pineapple cakes after tasting some utterly delicious ones made by a friend. The crust was particularly tender and flavourful. I was also intrigued by how the thin pastry is wrapped around the filling in a perfectly shaped square.
It turns out that the secret ingredient in the pastry is full cream milk powder! As for shaping, I should have guessed – the filled pastry is pressed into a mould. There are many Chinese pastries traditionally shaped by pressing dough balls into carved wooden moulds, some of which can have very elaborate designs. The difference with Taiwanese pineapple cakes is that they are baked inside the metal moulds that are used to shape them.
Some pineapple cake recipes include glutinous rice flour and maltose. I think these two ingredients, which serve to stiffen the filling, crept into recipes from commercial manufacturers who substitute all or part of the pineapple with winter melon, a vegetable in the squash family that is much cheaper than pineapple, and is also softer and less fibrous. Since winter melon has little flavour, artificial flavours and colours are added to the pastries to make them attractive to consumers. If you are tempted to substitute the pineapple with other fruits, you will probably also need to add the stiffening ingredients. Beware, however, that it would eliminate the luck-inducing power of pineapple cakes.
My friend based her recipe on a version by Chinese-language blog, Carol Easy Life. This site includes instructions on how to make homemade moulds from cardboard and aluminium foil. Alternatively, you can purchase the specialist moulds online.
I have adapted the recipe further to simplify the jam filling (since we are using fresh pineapple, we don’t need glutinous rice flour or maltose), and to make the pastry in a food processor instead of mixing by hand.
Taiwanese Pineapple Cake Recipe | 鳳梨酥
Ingredients
Pineapple Jam Filling
- 660 g 660g fresh pineapple, peeled and cored with ‘eyes’ removed
- 220 g caster sugar
- 80 g unsalted butter
Pastry
- 60 g unsalted butter
- 40 g shortening (Trex, Crisco or lard)
- 40 g caster sugar
- 25 g full-fat powdered milk
- 230 g pastry flour (such as Italian 00 flour)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 70 g beaten egg (this is approximately 1 ½ eggs; beat 2 eggs, then weigh and use 70g)
Instructions
Pineapple Jam Filling
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Peel the pineapple and remove core and ‘eyes’.
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Cut the pineapple flesh into small dice, about 5mm.
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Strain for about 10 minutes to remove excess juice.
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Place pineapple and sugar in a wide non-stick pan and cook over low medium heat until most of the moisture has evaporated, about 30 minutes, stirring often.
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Add butter and stir continuously until butter has melted into the pineapple. Keep the heat on to help evaporate moisture from the butter, but do not cook for more than about 5 minutes in order to preserve the taste of the butter. The mixture will appear soft, but it will stiffen when cooled to room temperature.
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Spread mixture thinly on a large plate to cool completely before using.
Pastry Dough
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Dice butter and shortening into approximately 1cm cubes. Freeze for 15 minutes.
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Add dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and mix.
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Tip frozen butter and shortening, and the beaten egg into food processor bowl, and pulse until crumbly.
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Tip mixture onto a pastry mat and quickly press together with your hands to form a ball. Do not knead, to avoid gluten developing and toughening the baked crust. Press dough into a disc and place in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.
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Note: The dough can also be made by creaming together the fats and the sugar, then adding the egg, and finally combining with the dry ingredients to create a crumble. This can then be pressed together to form a ball, in the same way as the food processor method.
Shaping Cakes
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Precise weights are important to ensure each pastry fits the mould snugly. Divide pineapple jam filling into portions of 20 grams each, and roll each portion into a ball.
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Divide pastry dough into portions of 25 grams each, and roll each portion into a ball.
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Flatten a dough ball. You can do this in your palm or with a small rolling pin, but It is easiest to do this in a tortilla press between two pieces of silicone greaseproof paper.
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Place a portion of filling into the centre of the flattened dough.
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Gently wrap the dough around the filling, pinching away and setting aside excess dough at the top and where the edges meet. Roll the filled dough between your palms to form a smooth ball.
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Place the ball into a metal mould.
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Gently press down using your fingers or a small pointed spatula, to ease the dough into the corners of the square mould. The dough will not quite reach the top of the mould – the pastry will expand when baked in the oven. Pave over any thin patches and cracks with the excess dough set aside earlier, smoothing the surface with the spatula. Turn the mould over and repeat on the other side.
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Place the shaped pastries, all still inside their moulds, on a baking sheet.
Baking
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When all pastries have been shaped, put the baking sheet into the fridge and chill for 15 minutes.
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While pastries are chilling, heat the oven to 170 C.
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Bake the pastries for 8 minutes. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and turn each pastry over.
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Return the pastries to the oven and bake 5-8 more minutes, until the top is slightly golden, checking regularly after 5 minutes. Do not over bake or the filling could expand and crack through the dough surrounding it.
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Remove the pastries from the oven, lift off the moulds and cool the pastries on a rack.
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One side of the pastry might be more coloured than the other – this is fine, you can turn them all on the same side for a uniform look, or turn them on different sides for contrast.
Serving and Storing
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The pastries can be enjoyed fresh and warm.
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However, convention is to leave the pastries overnight in an airtight container, after which the crust will have become more tender.
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The pastries should keep at room temperature for 3-4 days. Mine are all eaten within this this period so I’m afraid I don’t know what their maximum shelf life would be.
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Guest post by Diana Chan. Images by Kavita Favelle.
Please leave a comment - I love hearing from you!81 Comments to "An Authentic Taiwanese Pineapple Cake Recipe | 鳳梨酥"
What a wonderful recipe and the step-by-step photos make it seem more doable. I just posted a pineapple cake recipe too. Great minds and all that.
I hope you and Pete have a wonderful Christmas xx
Thanks, we felt that step-by-step photos would be helpful for something like this, which is quite unfamiliar. It was pretty straightforward in the end!
This looks amazing and something I would try once I bought those little square molds!
My favorite line in the article:
“Beware, however, that it would eliminate the luck-inducing power of pineapple cakes.”
Happy Christmas!!
Those language lessons are such a part of Chinese dishes, and one of the aspects of Diana’s writing that I particularly love!
The moulds are great to use, but if you don’t have any, the post we link to shows how to make some yourself. You can use Google Translate to read the instructions.
Looks absolutely delicious! I am terrible at making anything sweet so I tend to either buy them or I send a link to my baker friends hinting that I’d like a batch. LOL! I am Malaysian and we eat a lot of pineapple tarts, quite similar to these pineapple cakes. They are devine and I can smash a whole box in a very short period of time!
Yes, interestingly, Diana also bought a mould that allowed her to press this same pastry into individual tart cases and used the same filling to make little pineapple jam tarts. I have a friend from Malaysia who hosts a Perananak supperclub here and he has made those for dessert on occasion too. So good!
This recipe for Taiwanese Pineapple Cake looks brilliant. With all those easily available ingredients I would love to try it out in my kitchen too. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Yes, it’s all readily available ingredients, so well worth trying. The moulds are unusual but in the post we link to, there’s some tips on making homemade ones if you don’t have the metal set.
I was looking to learn how to make something authentic for my girlfriend these holidays and this post gave me a great idea. The Taiwanese pineapple cake looks delicious. I’m so glad I came across this article, thank you 🙂
These are a little bit of a labour of love, but actually not difficult at all, and so delicious. They are rich and butter and so good. If she loves pineapple, she’ll hopefully love these!
Oh yum, these look totally delicious! I love baking, but have never tried anything like this before. I do love pineapples though, so will be giving it a go. Very interesting about the full milk powder they use too.
Same here, I’d eaten these but not tried making anything like them previously! Was easy learning from Diana!
Big fan of pineapples but not of baking. I appreciate how the instructions are very clear. This would make a very special gift to take to a celebration, especially here in Miami, USA where this would not be a common treat!
I imagine you could do similar with a different fruit, but needs to be something that would work nicely with that butteriness.
These pineapple cakes look delicious. I love the fact that the number of ingredients are less, however, i haven’t seen such smallmetal containers you used. Will try making it some day
Yes, not too many ingredients and really good results. The metal moulds are special to these pastries but in the Chinese-language blog post we linked, you can find instructions on making your own instead.
Wow these look amazing! I don’t think I’ve had one before but would love to try one. Thanks for the recipe, I can’t wait to try to make them.
Enjoy!
Great presentation and very good recipes! I will give it a try and I am sure my family will love these. thank you for sharing!
I hope your family enjoys!
What a great recipe! I love the step-by-step photos! I tried baking with raw pineapple cake once but it turned out awful haha, I should really try this recipe tho.
Thanks, hopefully the photos will help people follow each step more easily!
Well done! Looks very delicious.
Thanks!
I am a Taiwanese and I have never ever attempted to make pineapple cake at home! Now that I live overseas, I do miss pineapple cakes on occasions. Maybe I should give it a try this holiday season!
Oh you definitely should, they aren’t difficult, even though there’s a few steps, hopefully these step by step instructions will make it straight forward and they are so good!
The recipe doesn’t look too difficult! I might only have to replace the eggs with egg-free options but otherwise recipe looks easy to follow.
I have most of the ingredients except for the square moulds. I guess it wouldn’t harm if I make round cakes instead. Haha!
It would work fine, and you can also make moulds yourself if you want! ❤️ Let me know how you get on!
I love the sound of these little cakes, what a great recipe, so nice to see something different.
They are delicious and unlike any other biscuit / cake / sweet I’ve had!
These look absolutely gorgeous and I think I prefer the idea of a pastry cum biscuit rather than cake. The step by step photos are particularly useful, though I’d need to use different moulds.
Yes, the name is definitely a misnomer as they aren’t really cake as we’d think of it So good!
Ooooh, so much yum! The Taiwanese pineapple cakes sound and look absolutely delish. Thank you for sharing this authentic recipe with us. 🙂
My pleasure!
What delicious sounding cakes, I’ve never heard of these. I have heard that pineapèple brings luck. Your recipe looks great especially with all the photos to follow.
Yes, pineapple is considered lucky which is perhaps one reason (alongside their deliciousness) for the popularity of these lovely treats!
These look scrumptious 😋!
They were!
They look beautiful and sound quite delicious. Way beyond my own cooking skills, but lovely to learn how they are made (and I do like pineapple!)
Definitely not beyond your skills, they aren’t difficult, but do take time, but it’s quite enjoyable to sit and make them.
What a labour of love, I bet they are really worth it though
Time consuming but enjoyable, not too difficult actually!
Wow, I’ve never come across these fascinating Pineapple Cakes but would love to try them!
They are ubiquitous in Taiwan but yes, not seen them much elsewhere.
These cakes look so good – I can imagine how delicious they are!
Very very!
Hi! Your recipe look awesome! I was wondering what size is your mold and where can I buy them at? Thank you !
Hi Tiff, these belong to my friend Diana, I’ll ask her to check the size, she had a friend bring them for her from Taiwan.
I can find them in the USA, such as these, but not that ship to the UK. https://www.amazon.com/Giftshop12-Aluminum-Rectangular-Cutters-Pineapple/dp/B01HJBYEEA
An interesting version of a cake, pie or cookie. Just simply love how cute they look. Making them from fresh pineapple jam must have made them so so delicious.
Yeah, such a great flavour and very luscious.
Hi. I noticed that the flour you used is pastry flour, if not available is there any substitute.
Hi Margaret, pastry flour is simply wheat flour that is low in gluten and protein. If you can find Italian flour tagged as 00, that’s perfect. But basically, any plain / all-purpose flour is fine. Avoid bread flour which has high gluten levels, great for bread but not for crumbly pastry.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe. My husband used to work for HTC phone so he traveled to Taipei monthly. He always brought back chia te pineapple cake. Rather pricy (even more if bought in US) but they are so good. He no longer travels there and I’m so glad I came across this website. I will try making this..seems labor intensive but your detailed step by step photos are very helpful.
My pleasure and I’d love to hear how you get on, please send photos if you are willing! 💜
It looks so yummy! I have wanted to bake these but I don’t know where to buy the square molds. Where did you buy yours? Do you have a suggestion? I’m from the Philippines. Thank you so much 🙂
Hi Jazz, my friend had her friend bring them from Taiwan. But there’s a link in the post to making your own lives with cardboard and foil if needed! 👍
I have always wanting to make these tarts but do not have the recipe. thanks for sharing
Those look yummy! Do you know the size of the molds?
I’ll ask my friend to measure them. We made these at her house 👍
Have you ever made these without the molds? Would they hold shape without or melt away?
I haven’t tried but I have recently found and bought a set of moulds from the internet, very cheap want perfect for these!
Glad to visit Taiwain 2 weeks. Discovered a delicious pineapple pastry. I was addicted to it. We ate it eveyday after lunch. Your receipe can help us to try. Thank you.
Excellent recipe with clear step-by-step instructions and photos! Many thanks for sharing.
Brings back memories to the many, many pineapple cakes I enjoyed when visiting Taipei 🙂
My pleasure, glad you have found it useful. We too loved the pineapple cakes when we visited Taiwan!
I made the filling using brown sugar, its turn about a bit darker and a bit more flavor as well. The cookie dough is spot on, work well in my high humidity kitchen like mine. Overall, very tasty treat, thanks for putting together the recipe 😘
Very pleased it worked for you and your brown sugar variant sounds wonderful! ♥️
Hi! If we use the rectangular pineapple cake molds, do we need to increase/edit the amount of filling/pastry that’s needed in each mold? Or is it okay if we just follow your recipe exactly and maybe ours turn out a little flatter? For reference, the molds I have seem to be 6cm x 3.6cm; not sure how that compares with yours.
Planning to make this for my boyfriend this weekend since he took me to meet his family in Taiwan over CNY, super excited to see if he likes them!! The pineapple is ripening on the counter right now 🙂
I will need to measure the ones we used, the set I have now is rectangular but not the same size as yours. I would make these amounts and try making one cake, see how it fits in your mould, then maybe you can adjust the amount of pastry and filling for each cake, it doesn’t matter if you make a few less, right? Let me know how you get on, I love these so much I need to make them again soon. If only I can find my moulds, we moved last year!
I made them yesterday!! They turned out very well, though my color was not nearly as beautiful as yours (they stayed very pale except on the bottom side). I also really struggled to wrap them, but they were still good.
Also I looked at my molds and they definitely are not as big as I said!! (I went off the online description before.) I don’t have a ruler to measure, but I’d say they’re maybe a little over an inch tall to a little under an inch wide, and maybe half an inch deep. Pretty small, I think. The measurements here yielded too large of a ball; I found that 12g of filling to 16g of dough was about right; I could have maybe added a gram or two more to one or both components.
My boyfriend said the flavor was really good, and though he wasn’t expecting the slightly chunky texture of the pineapple (I don’t have a food processor so I just diced super small by hand), he actually liked that more since it felt more natural and handmade.
Loved this recipe, I’ve been recommending it to all my friends who ask!
More tips for anyone else who makes this and reads this far down the comments:
* Reducing the pineapple filling took quite a bit longer for me than the recipe states, maybe more like 45 minutes. I also didn’t reduce as much as needed at first and had to put it back on the pan because it was too fluid. It seemed about right when bubbles didn’t really come up from the middle of the pan, but basically all from the sides. That seemed to congeal more reliably.
Pressing into a ball caused the pastry to crack for me very easily, so when shaping them, I found it helpful to instead lightly tap very vigorously. If there are holes or cracks, you can cover them by taking a very small piece of dough (crumbs, really), mushing them between your fingers, and then covering the hole and again, vigorously lightly tapping it into place.
Thanks again for a great recipe!! Looking forward to making it again.
I’m really pleased you had success even though you needed to adapt a little as you went along. I think the pure pineapple filling is better than many of the commercial ones you can buy in Taiwan as they add cheaper fruit to bulk or the more expensive pineapple. And then add extras to compensate for the texture and flavour!
Most of the comments on here are from people who are looking to make these cakes, but haven’t tested the recipe, so it’s hard to know. But I did follow this recipe to the T and the 40g of shortening (I used Copha which is coconut based fat you can get in Australian stores as a substitute for shortening) just ruined the short pastry crust. As soon as I placed this in the oven the cakes started sweating and forming puddles of melted shortening. The end result was nothing worth keeping. Despite the lack of form, I hoped the taste would redeem these cakes but it just tasted like cardboard. I’ll try again and just follow a butter-only crust recipe and also omit the butter from the pineapple filling – I didn’t think this was necessary.
I’m sorry you didn’t like the recipe, and it didn’t work for you, but we have made it exactly as written, and you can see the step by step photos throughout.
Unfortunately, substitutions often change the texture and behaviour of pastry significantly, so it may be that the coconut based fat that you used didn’t behave in the same way as regular shortening.
I was just about to comment the same. All the comments are not about having done it with an end result. It’s all thanks you for a recipe. Maybe someone who have tried it give me assurance of its goodness. Thanks for recipe anyways.
There are at least two comments from people who HAVE tried it and enjoyed it, if you take the time to look through. In addition, they made sure to follow the actual recipe as written whereas Kim made substitutions, which will have affected the results.
Will it make a big difference if I use nonfat dry milk instead of full fat?
The pastry is quite specific, and I would think changing the fat content would change the finished texture, but by how much, I couldn’t tell you. This is definitely a recipe that uses lots of butter, and that’s very much part of the taste.
Hi Kavey,
Would it be fine if I used a brownie bar baking pan instead of the square molds? Here’s an example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008KE7L2S/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
I’ve had a look and I think I’d try it. My only note is that it may mean the baking time isn’t quite the same, and I wouldn’t be able to give guidance on that. But I can’t see why it wouldn’t work!
So excited to come across your recipe. Prepackaged pineapple cakes vary greatly. Can’t find the ones we love so much from Taiwan here in the states. Your ingredients are exactly what we expect from our favorite brand. Can’t wait for my molds to arrive so we can make them. thank you for posting.
I hope you enjoy the recipe and that the result reminds you of your favourite brand. I’d love to see how you get on, so please come back and let me know, and maybe send me a photo by email of your results!