Sunday Baking - Mini raspberry (or fig) almond tarts

En français ici.
My littlest sister is a bit of a genius when it comes to baking. Well, she's a bit of a genius in general I have to say (proud big-sister moment), but when it comes to desserts: cookies, cakes, scones etc., she's definetly got it down. So, when I asked her if she had any recipes she was enjoying lately, and she sent me this recipe for "Miniature Raspberry Almond Tarts", I ran to the kitchen and started making them (well, I had to get a few ingredients first, but honestly I didn't even wait 'till my next shopping day)! Of course I made some of my own adjustments, substituting some yummy fig jam made by D's mother, rather than raspberry...

For Sunday Baking today, I'm posting a copy of her email (in italics), complete with her suggestions (in red), and my suggestions (in purple, as per usual). Got all that? Here we go!

Hopie,

This is from Odense.com. Odense is a company that makes almond paste, conveniently in tubes that are JUST the right size for their recipes. I hate to succumb to such blatant advertising, but it's hard not to when the recipes are so delicious. :-)

This recipe made two batches of muffin-top sized tarts for me.

Ingredients for crust:
12 Tbsp butter (1 1/2 sticks) at room temperature (so plan ahead a little)
2/3 cup cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Ingredients for filling:
1/3 cup red raspberry preserves (Here's where I used fig jam, yum)
7 oz. almond paste (don't know if you can get Odense in Paris, but in America it should be in the baking aisle - you can't, i used 200g of some very colorful almond paste that I DID find in the baking aisle)
3/4 cup sugar
3 large egg yolks
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 Tbsp milk
1 Tbsp fresh orange juice (I didn't have any, I used mango juice)
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Equipment: (but don't worry too much if you don't have exactly this stuff)
mini cupcake pans
electric mixer

box grater

1. Mix butter and cream cheese (with electric mixer or a fork) until well-combined.
2. Add the flour and mix again until blended. Shape into a ball. Flatten, wrap well in plastic and refrigerate for one hour.
3. Divide chilled dough into 1" balls. Press the balls into the bottoms and up the sides of the tart pans, forming the shells
4. Preheat oven to 400F. Place about 1 tsp raspberry (or fig, or other) preserves into the bottom of each shell.
5. Grate the almond past. (Hope, the original recipe says you should grate it on the large-hole side of a box grater and then mix it in a food processor, but if you don't have one - I don't - you should grate the paste as small as possible and use the electric mixer - or a good fork.)
6. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
7. Mix in flour, milk, orange juice, lemon juice and vanilla extract until smooth.
8. Spoon filling on top of jam. (Hope, there's a temptation here to put in a lot of filling, - true! - but you have to keep it within the shell or the tarts will fall apart when you take them out - also the filling will bubble over and stick the tarts to the pans mercilessly!)
9. Bake for 15 minutes or until puffed and a deep golden color.
10. Cool tarts on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove tarts from pans and keep cooling on racks.

One more note: these often don't look very appetizing, but they taste DELICIOUS, especially with milk. Many times I've had people look at them rather askance until they try them, and then they always want more.

Yesh chsey uur dulisouch! What? Sorry, my mouth was full of yummy mini tart.
I don't know if you all noticed, but you only use the egg yolks in this recipe...and you know what that means... it'll be meringues for me this week!! ;-) Two desserts in one. Oh, so good.
Happy baking!