Last weekend I decided to make something with Isla and I didn't want to make cakes and I remembered how I loved it when I'd get to make jam tarts with my Nan when I was little. We would make jam ones and also lemon curd ones (I liked these the best!) and I remember not being able to wait that long to eat them after they came out of the oven, but you kind of have to with jam tarts or they take the skin off the roof of your mouth! It's also important to not let little fingers near the jam when the tarts come out of the oven as again it is terrifically hot!
So here's the recipe:
250g plain flour
125g softened butter
1 egg beaten - you might only need half of this, depends on how your pastry is coming together
Optional: you can add 20g of icing sugar to the ingredients to make the pastry sweet - although I found that the jam made things sweet enough and I stuck to savoury pastry
Set oven to 200 degrees/ Gas mark 6
- Put the flour and butter (and icing sugar if you're using it) in the food processor and whizz for 10 seconds. Then add half the beaten egg. Whizz again and watch how the mix is coming together. At this point you may need to add a bit more egg. Then use your hands to bring the pastry together. (You can do all of this with your hands - food processor isn't crucial - you would rub the butter into the flour and then once a breadcrumb texture, gradually add egg in the same way and bring together)
- Flatten the pastry out on the surface to about 3mm and then use a cutter to cut out 12 rounds - my cutter was 6cm.
- Put the rounds into a shallow baking tin and put a teaspoon of jam into each one. We had some scraps of pastry left and we cut out some hearts and put these on the top of the jam to make the tarts a bit prettier!
- Bake for 8 - 12 minutes until the pastry is golden and the jam is all oozy and bubbling, remove to wire rack to cool
They look very yummy!