Jam Tarts

The perfect thing to do with left over short crust pastry is make jam tarts. They are ridiculously easy to make even if you don't have any left over pastry and need to make it from scratch. Recipe is here for the pastry (method point 7) and contruction for the jam tarts is below.

I think that they are a very under rated baked good and one of my best birthday cakes (leaving aside the epic ones my parents used to make for me when I was little) was a massive jam tart my friend at work made for me one year. It was brilliant.

Ingredients
Short crust pastry - 200g worth makes about 10-12
Jam - I favour strawberry but whatever you like

1.    Preheat the oven to 190°C/GM 5.

2.    Roll out the pastry until quite thin. You’ll need to ensure it’s not too cold otherwise it will keep breaking up.

3.    Cut out into about 6cm or 7cm rounds and line the bottom of a cupcake tin with them. Ideally use a shallower cupcake tin as a muffin tin might be a bit deep. If that’s all you have then you might need to cut out 8-9cm rounds. You shouldn’t need to grease the tin because of the butter in the pastry and the fact that most area bit non-stick.

4.    Put a heaped teaspoon of jam in the middle of each round and bake for about 15-20 minutes.

5.    Let cool (as the jam will be very hot) and then turn out.