Queen of Hearts' Jam Tarts
Serves: 24
Preparation: 45 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Quintessentially British, these jam tarts have a royal twist with their heart decorations. The basic sweet shortcrust pastry recipe has lemon zest added to it for extra flavour. To save time, you could buy shortcrust pastry from your local Central England Co-operative.
Ingredients
- 225g plain flour
- 115g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and chilled
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 1 tbsp golden caster sugar or icing sugar
- 1 egg yolk 2½ tbsp water (approx)
- 24 tsp (approx 200g)
- jam eg raspberry, strawberry, apricot, bramble or lemon curd
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/Gas 4.
- Lightly butter two 12-hole tart tins.
- Put the flour into a bowl, add the chilled butter pieces and, using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour to make ‘breadcrumbs’.
- Add the lemon zest, sugar and egg yolk and stir with a knife, adding just enough of the water to help bring the pastry into a ball with your hands. Wrap the pastry in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
- On a floured work surface roll out most of the pastry to about the same thickness as a pound coin.
- Cut out 24 x 7.5cm circles or heart shapes or a mixture of both and place in the tart tins.
- Roll out the remaining pastry and cut out 24 x 2.5cm small hearts for the middle of the tarts.
- Spoon 1 tsp of jam into each pastry case (using different flavour jams will make them more colourful), then top with the small pastry hearts. Bake for 10 minutes or until the pastry is golden.
- Allow to cool – don’t be tempted to eat a tart straight from the oven, as the jam will be very hot!
