Mini Jam Tarts

I always find that baking is a great rainy activity when you need to pass a few hours with the children. One of our easiest and most enjoyable bakes is always jam tarts as everybody loves them and as we recently got sent a ton of jam from the lovely people at Duerrs it was a no-brainer when we were looking for something to make.

The children get a lot of pleasure out of rolling out the pastry and cutting out the circles. And of course filling them with jam although a fair amount goes in their tummies as well.  We decided to make the tarts in mini form as they're the perfect size for just popping in your mouth and you don't feel at all guilty when you have three at once because their only tiny so it doesn't count. Or something like that.

You'll need a mini-muffin tray to make these little tarts but if you don't have one you can just make them standard size. This recipe will make about 12 standard size jam tarts.

Mini Jam Tarts

Ingredients

150g plain flour

pinch of salt

75g unsalted butter, diced

3 tbsp caster sugar 

1 egg yolk

Jams of your choosing (I use a mix of apricot, strawberry and raspberry)

Method

Sift the flour and salt together into a mixing bowl. Add in the diced butter and rub into the flour until you have a breadcrumb-like consistency.  Add the caster sugar and the egg yolk and mix until you have a stiff mixture. 

To make the mixture all come together, add a little water a tbsp at a time. Knead the pastry gently then wrap in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for around 15 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180c/gas mark 4.

Lightly dust a clean worktop with flour and roll out the pastry evenly to roughly the thickness of a £1 coin. Stamp out circles with a small circular cutter. Line your muffin tin with the circles and place a heaped tsp of jam in each.

Bake in the oven for around 20 minutes until golden. Remove from the tin using a knife and transfer to a wire cooling rack.

Do not, I repeat DO NOT be tempted into eating them when they first come out of the oven. The jam is like hot molten lava which will burn YOUR FACE OFF. There, you've been warned. (I do it every time...)

The quickest and easiest way to make pastry is in the food processor, however you can make this an even quicker rainy day activity with a packet of ready-made pastry from Jus-Rol, I'm not too proud to say that's what I do on occasion!