recipe is: crumbly mini tartlets

PASTRY:

Ingredients


160 gm butter
30 gm icing sugar
220 gm flour (remove 2 tbsp and replace with 2 tbsp cornfour)
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1 egg yolk for glazing


Method

preheat oven to 180 celcius


cream butter with sugar till light and fluffy. add egg yolk and vanilla essence and mix til just combined

add in flour and mix into a dough. rest in fridge for 10 mins

on a lightly floured working surface, shape the dough to your own liking, either roll into mini balls, or using cookie cutters or rolled out to make mini tartlet rolls. if the dough is a bit hard coming out of the fridge to shape, knead it a bit to warm it up a little to make it more pliable

apply the jam filling to the tartlets. glaze with egg yolk, put on a greased/lined baking tray and bake for about 20 mins til light golden brown


FILLING:

Ingredients

4 red apples, skinned, cored and roughly grated

grated rind of 1 lemon

3 heaped tbsp of brown sugar

2 tbsp lemon juice

1/4 tsp salt

1 small stick cinnamon

2 star anise

5 cloves


Method

put all the ingredients in a saucepan or frying pan on a medium heat and fry til most of the liquid had evaporated, stirring occasionally. once most of the liquid has evaporated, turn down the flame and keep frying, stirring to keep it from burning (especially if not using a non-stick pan)

the sugars will start to caramelise and thicken further. keep stirring til almost completely dry. this will take about 1 hour, depending on how moist is the fruit to begin with


Notes:

the dough might be a little bit hard to work with as it is quite crumbly. take care not to break it during the shaping, filling or glazing processes.

other jam fillings can be used to substitute. this is normally made with pineapple jam fillings. just make sure cookie fillings are used and not normal bread jam as it is too wet for these cookies. jams with some fibre is recommended compared to pureed jams.

adjust the sugar content to suit, as some apples are sweeter than others. once almost all the liquid has evaporated during the cooking process, do a taste test and add more sugar if needed.