Happy Holidays!
Christmas is here and I decided that this holiday season needed some delicious Jam Tarts and boy was I RIGHT!
This Outlander treat called for 1/2 Short Crust Pastry recipe and 1/2 cup of Fraser Strawberry Jam.
To start set the oven to 375 degrees and prepare your muffin tin. For the dough, mix together flour, sugar, salt and butter in a food processor. Pulse until you have mostly pea sized lumps. Then whisk together ice water, egg yolk and lemon juice. Add to the bowl and pulse a few more times. I eventually had to mix a little more thoroughly by hand.
Sprinkle some flour on your counter and knead the dough into a ball. Flatten with a rolling pin and roll to about 1/8 inch thick. Use a 4 inch "cookie cutter" to cut out 12 rounds. If you don't have one, I used a large mason jar. Press the pastry into each muffin tin cup and poke the bottoms three or four times with a fork. Bake for about 5 mins. Don't worry, you will be baking the pastry a bit more once the jam is added.
The tasty Fraser jam is at the back of the Outlander Cookbook, detailing how to make and can preserves. For this strawberry jam, you will need Granny Smith apples, strawberries, lemon juice and sugar. Start by cutting the apples into 1/2 inch cubes and the strawberries into halves or quarters.
In a pot of medium heat stir the fruit and lemon juice together. Bring the mixture to a boil and stir constantly to avoid any scorching. Next stir in the sugar until it's dissolved. The jam needs to reach about 212 degrees which takes about 15 to 25 minutes.
It was kinda fun making a fruit compote, I always see chefs turn to this 'filling' solution on the Food Network and they make it look effortless. Turns out it is pretty easy and quick to create. I'll definitely have to make it again. My mom kept wanting to add in a thickener and I had to convince her that I needed to follow Theresa Carle-Sanders recipe exactly. It was pretty funny!
Hindsight, I should have cut the apples a bit smaller but their size did not take away from the old-fashioned compote-style jam. It was just a bit chunkier and there's nothing wrong with that he he!
Now you're ready to create your tarts. Fill each cup with about 1 teaspoons of jam (I was a bit heavy handed) and return them to the oven. Bake until the jam bubbles and the pastry is golden. This took about 15 minutes.
Gently remove the tarts from the muffin tin and set on a cooling rack. The recipe says to let them cool completely and they were right LOL! I didn't want to wait and tried to eat one a bit early. I topped a few tarts with a strawberry slice and plated them. Voila! Outlander Jam Tarts! Thanks Theresa!
These lovely creations were both savory and sweet. I couldn't get enough and my whole family really enjoyed them. Craig described these as tasting like the original strawberry pop tarts of his youth and he's not wrong!
Thanks for readin!
Cheers, Bun
