I’ve been doing an Instagram “Pic a Day in May” competition (check me out, I’m e.kadri) with Black Milk Clothing, the fun kids in Brisbane who make crazy printed lycra tights, tops, skirts, and heaps of other stuff too. You’re already wondering what this has to do with cakey things, well, each day you had to take a pic on a theme. Last week there was a theme “I Love Me”. I was in a literal mood, and the only thing that I have in my wardrobe from Black Milk that has hearts on it happens to be my Queen of Hearts dress. And what does the Queen of Hearts do? She makes tarts. And what do I do when I want to treat myself? I make cake. Logical.
How do I love me? Let me count the tarts. Jam tarts are so old fashioned, but the are jewel-like and fun, and if the jam inside is good enough, then jam tarts should be give quite some consideration.
My jam tarts have a mix of strawberry and blackberry jam inside, and have an incredibly short, melt-in-the-mouth, walnut pastry, which is also used to make little sugar dusted hearts to top the jam tarts.
Super cute.
You know what else? I didn’t have a cookie cutter the right size, and I made this heart shaped cookie cutter out of a strip of aluminium can. Just bend into a heart shape! They won’t last forever, but it’s a great fast fix.
Jam Tarts for the Queen of Hearts
makes 20
ingredients
185g unsalted butter, cold, cubed
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
50g walnuts
2-3 tbsp iced water
1 1/4 cups best quality berry jam (I used strawberry and blackberry (or try my gin, vanilla and raspberry jam)), for the filling
icing sugar, to dust
mixing
Combine the flour, salt and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and process until the walnuts are finely ground. Add the butter, and process until crumbs form. Sprinkle over most of the water, and process until the mixture comes together. Gather the mixture together into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Roll the pastry out to about 3mm thick. Cut 20 8cm rounds, and cut 20 3cm heart shapes. Press the pastry rounds gently into tart cases, and place the heart cookies onto a baking sheet. Spoon 1 tbsp of jam into each of the pastry cases.
Put both the tarts and the heart cookies into the oven at the same time, and bake at 180 degrees Celsius. Bake the heart cookies 1o minutes, until golden. Bake the tarts a further 10 minutes, until the jam is bubbling up. Remove from the oven, and cool in the pans.
Dust the heart cookies with icing sugar, then carefully place one on top of each jam tart, while the jam tart is still hot. Cool to room temperature before serving.
Enjoy!xxx
