Jam Tarts

And now, a seemingly infinite expanse of time later (I'm so sorry everyone), we finally reach our next new food item in our saga of preparing (or at least exploring) all the foods to appear in the Harry Potter series:

"'Want a jam tart, Hermione?' said Fred.

Hermione looked doubtfully at the plate he was offering her. Fred grinned.

'It's alright,' he said. 'I haven't done anything to them. It's the custard creams you've got to watch--'"

(Goblet of Fire 366).

For our jam tarts, we shall use Dinah Bucholz' recipe from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. I'm a big fan of individually-sized desserts, so I'm a big fan of this one!

You Will Need:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 sticks cold butter, cut into chunks

1 cold large egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla

3 Tbs ice water

1/2 cup any flavor of jam (alas, not pictures)

1. For the crust, place the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine.

2. Scatter the pieces of butter over the flour mixture and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse yellow meal with no white powdery bits remaining (probably around 20 pulses).

3. Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl.

4. Beat the egg yolk with the vanilla and water and pour it into the flour-butter mixture. Toss with a spatula until the dough clumps together. If the dough is too dry add 1 more Tbs water (better too wet than too dry).

5. Form into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours, or up to 3 days.

6. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Roll out the dough 1/8" thick.

7. Use a 4" round cookie cutter (or a glass and a knife) to stamp out circles of dough. 

8. Fit the circles of dough into tartlet (or muffin) pans.

9. Place 1 Tbs of jam in each tart. The jam should just cover the bottom of the tart. If you use too much jam, it will bubble over and the tarts will never escape their tins in one piece.

10. Decorate the tarts with cutouts from the leftover dough (like my deathly hallows marks?)

11. Ms. Bucholz says to bake the tarts for 20-25 minutes. I say start with 15 minutes and then start checking every two minutes until they're golden brown. 

Allegedly this recipe makes 8 tarts, but I ended up with way more than that! And they are quite tasty! Perfect when accompanied with a cup of tea with cream. Cheers!