I’m on a diet. I admit it. I don’t want to be, it’s just that the last 6 months I’ve pretty much eaten whatever I wanted in whatever volume I wanted and the outcome of my little experiment is… that I am not one of those people who can do that and still wear skinny jeans. So I am being very careful and my goodness it’s dull. When I was a teenager I could lose half a stone in a week from eating nothing save apples and black coffee, now I need proper food or I find myself shouting at the children, wincing through the hunger pangs.
As I am being very boring the most I can manage at the moment is maybe one of these little morsels. Very easy to make, much appreciated by husbands, small children and close relatives. You could buy the pastry if you wanted too. If I hosted canapé type parties I’d serve these. Alas, I host pirate parties instead.
This makes 24 little morsels, made in my Wilton tin which I have to say is very good indeed and left not one tart stuck in the tin. (Not paid to say that etc etc.)
Ingredients:
– 360g pastry (I used leftover pastry using this recipe but you could make a half fat to flour mixture using 120g cold butter and 240g plain flour, rub in and pull together with a splash of cold water, rest in the fridge for half an hour and off we go)
– 120g jam of your choice, I chose raspberry
– 360g marzipan, any colour will do
Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Take a blob of pastry, about a tablespoons worth, which for more precise folks is 15g, and form it into a disc. Press into your tin and then use your thumb to push into the sides. Repeat for all 24 holes and then put the tin in your fridge to relax the pastry.
In the meantime make 24 discs of marzipan to eventually seal your little morsels. Again, use about 15g of marzipan. Remove the tin complete with pastry from the fridge, spoon a teaspoon of jam into each pastry lined hole.
Then top off with a disc of marzipan and use your thumb to squash down and seal each morsel. Repeat until the tin is full and then bake for about 20 minutes until the marzipan is starting to brown.
Remove. Leave to cool in the tin a little and then after about 10 minutes use a very sharp knife to eek them out by slipping it between the pastry and the tin. Just a slight poke should do. Cool completely on a wire rack and enjoy as many as you like if you’re not on a bloody diet like me.