Lil' Tarts

And I mean tarts completely in the edible sense...

Lil' Bakewell Tarts! I do apologise that sometimes my Titles may appear shocking and misleading, i.e 'Rabbit Cake' (where no rabbits were harmed in the making...*cough*) but I feel they are necessary to arouse intrigue and curiosity in the following post thus allowing relief and enjoyment to sweep over my dear readers as they realise they are not about to read about tarts and massacred rabbit cakes...See, everything I do I do for you reader.

Anyway! You know I ramble, but all ramblings lead to a logical post. So here are my little Bakewell tarts!

I went for the 'rustic' home made look (i.e I couldn't be bothered to make them look really neat and trim the edges to the nearest millimetre because let's face it, all little tarts look like that - and I like mine to look a lil' different!)

So I made me some shortcrust pastry courtesy of The Delia

- Greased up me muffin pan, and here's how to achieve the beautiful rustic effect; don't cut out nice little circles from your pastry to line the tin, cut out completely random shapes and squidge them into the pan! So you end up with funky pointy bits and unusual shapes; much more fun! (and a lot less effort)

- Pricked the bases of the pastry with my trusty fork; this is supposed to prevent the bases getting soggy or something...incontinent pastry.

- Then blind bake your pastry (by this I don't mean grab the nearest blind person you can find on the street; it would alarm said blind person and such acts are frowned upon) what it actually means is! (Oh and it also doesn't mean blind yourself...baking should be pleasureable, not masochistic) Ahem, it means! Line your uncooked pastry with baking parchment then use your weapon of choice to weigh it down (I use baking beans; like ceramic chick peas) but you can use anything oven proof and heavy. Bake them like that for aboooout 10 minutes...ish...until your pastry looks slightly cooked, but we don't want them completley cooked yet!

- Then we remove our part cooked pastry, remove the beanage and parchment and plop in a dollop of your chosen jam (Raspberry all the way...not that I'm trying to influence your decision) and theeeen a dollop of Bakewell mix!

-Then cook 'em up for about 10-15 minutes until your little tarts have risen and your pastry is lightly browned (see below)

- Then I got a bit cutesy and added some little almond slice hearts for added 'Aaw' factor!

And here's my winged tart...

Very moist, very delicious, and very gone within 20 minutes of making them!

(Notice no soggy bottoms!)