One of my favourite Chinese New Year snacks. I have no idea why they are called love letters because the direct translation from Mandarin should be egg rolls. Maybe people in the past used to roll up love letters in these biscuits. Anyhow, to make these biscuits, you will either need the old school charcoal machine or the electric press (which looks like a sandwich press but specially made for love letters). I found making love letters extremely therapeutic. Simply because it is repetitive and you can watch television while making it. However, it is extremely time consuming because it takes at least 1 min to make 2 love letters and you can’t rush it unless you have more than one machine. I got the recipe from my uncle and in the past, they used to use their hands to roll the biscuits and it is a painful process because the biscuit is really hot. To save his blistering hands, he fashioned a stick with a slit in the middle to roll up the love …

Chinese new year is not complete with pineapple tarts. This was my first time making pineapple tarts because it’s impossible to find them in Australia. Pineapple tarts are one of the most expensive new year goodies after making them on my own, I finally understood why. Making these tarts is seriously a lot of work and my back was aching after that. To make pineapple tarts, first you need to prepare the jam. Cooking the jam takes two hours and requires a lot of patience. After that you need to make the cookie dough. I made the jam and cookie dough at the same time and then placed it in the fridge to rest overnight. The next day, I spent about 1.5hr rolling the cookie dough out. You will probably spend about 4hr in total preparing the jam, cookie dough and making the tarts. To me, the perfect pineapple tart is one with a crumbly, melting texture to it and the jam must not be too sweet. So the trick to a crumbly, melty texture …