Little tarts

I made these strawberry rhubarb tartlets on July 4 as part of my contribution to the gourmet picnic I had with Deb and Al on Ojibway Island before watching the fireworks. I followed - mostly - the recipe I found on bites out of life, a truly delightful blog I happened upon that morning. 

I decided to bake mine two ways - half of the batch with the "free form" method and half on parchment squares tucked in the wells of a 12-cup cupcake tin. The two-bite version shown here was less messy and a bit more picturesque than my other attempt. (I didn't take a pic of those.) They didn't hold their shape (which I knew was a possibility) and drizzled all over the bottom of the oven (I had initially grabbed a regular flat cookie sheet - oops). It was about 1,000 degrees outside so when I opened the windows to try to get the smoke out, it met a wall of heat, which seemed to push it right back in. Charming. I cranked up the fan, then transferred the poor bits of fruity dough to a shallow baking pan  to finish cooking. As messy as those were, they were still tasty, though a little gooey on the bottoms from sitting in all that sugary syrupy goo. Did I mention they were messy? 

The entirely different dough-to-filling ratio deserves further consideration, though. So I froze two unbaked tartlets that didn't fit on my baking sheet to see how that might impact their form and bake-ability. Today was Jake's birthday - a perfect time to pull those out to bake in addition to making a batch with raspberry, blackberry and blueberry filling. I'm sorry. No pics of those either - but they look pretty much like the ones above only with different filling. Other than the pâte brisée below, I did not follow a recipe for today's tartlets. I had three small bowls - one of raspberries, one of blackberries and one of blueberries - and just added a bit of sugar and flour to each. I let that sit while I rolled out the dough, which I had made and chilled this morning. I cut squares of parchment and tucked them in cupcake tins again and then added about 1 tablespoon of filling to each dough circle. Baked at 400F for 30 minutes, then another 10 or so at 350F, until lightly browned and bubbly.

The two baked from the frozen state still oozed but not as much. And I was prepared this time with extra parchment lining a shallow baking pan. k

I think I'm going to keep testing this whole tartlet thing until I get it right.

pâte brisée

from bites out of life/adapted from Martha Stewart

Makes 1 8- to 10-inch double crust pie or 2 8- to 10-inch single crust pies

- 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 1 teaspoon sugar

- 1 cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

- 1/4-1/2 cup ice water

1) In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, salt and sugar and process for 10-15 seconds, until the dry ingredients are well-mixed.

2) Add the butter pieces and process until the mixture resembles a coarse meal, an additional 10-15 seconds. Slowly pour in the ice water through the feed tube as the processor continues to pulse, until the dough just comes together. Do not process for longer than 30 seconds.

3) Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface. Knead a few times if necessary, to incorporate all of the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients uniformly. Divide the dough into two equal pieces and cover each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before using.