Monday, August 1, 2011

Cutiepies

With dreams of my very own bakery dancing in my head, I made mini-tarts this weekend. I’m calling them cutiepies! Paris had made these amazing looking mini blueberry pies, so I wanted to make minis too. I knew exactly what I’d make, I went right for a recipe I got from a Food and Wine magazine. A Food and Wine magazine that I picked up after visiting Portland, because Noel and James get Food and Wine, so I’m scoping it out to see whether or not it’ll be the next one I order.
Recipe for free form tarts:

Pastry

2 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ sticks cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
½ cup ice water

Filling

Use whatever fruit you want, cut it up of course, the magazine suggested mango, and it’s absolutely the best fruit in these tarts, amazingly yummy! They also suggest pineapple and berries, use your imagination! I also like the way bananas taste after they’ve been baked, they have their own natural sweetness.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Sugar, for sprinkling
Crème fraiche or vanilla ice cream, or whipped cream, for serving. But these suckers taste amazing the next day as is as a breakfast treat.

Now that you’ve got everything together, Do This:

1. Make the Pastry- In a food processor, pulse the flour and salt. Add the butter and pulse until it’s the size of small peas. Sprinkle the ice water over the mixture and pulse until it comes together. Transfer pastry to work surface and knead a few times until it comes together. Divide in half and flatten into disks. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour, can be made a day ahead.

2. Preheat oven to 400. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. On lightly floured surface roll out a disk to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out rounds that are 5 inches in diameter, can make 4 per disk. Place on baking sheet. Repeat with second disk. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.

3. Arrange the fruit on dough rounds. Bring the pastry edges up and around the fruit, pinching firmly to form pleated edges around fruit. Refrigerate 10 minutes more.

4. Brush tarts with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar. Bake 35 minutes, until pastry is browned and fruit is bubbling. Cool on wire rack.

-If you want to make them super tiny like I did…I made them 3 inch rounds, and decreased the temperature of the oven to 350 for the first 15 minutes, after that, I rotated the pan and turned the oven up to the standard 400 for the rest of the time, still cooking them for a total of 35 minutes. I made some with tops too, just remember to make holes in the top crust. Enjoy!

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