Home › The Principles of Cookery › Tartlets

Tartlets

Tartlets may be made with puff-paste, almond paste, or any sweet pastry. They are made as follows. Butter some patty-pans, and line them with pastry rolled out to the thickness of a quarter of an inch. Trim them neatly, put a little crust of bread into each tartlet, or--since this will answer the same purpose, which is to keep the pastry from puffing up in the centre--prick two or three holes in the bottom of the tartlet; bake in a quick oven. When they are two-thirds baked, take the tartlets out of the oven, remove the bread, and in its place put a spoonful of jam or marmalade. Return them to the oven, and bake until done enough. Let them get cold before serving, ornament prettily, and send them to table piled high on a dish covered with a white napkin. Some cooks put the jam into the tartlets before they are baked at all, but this practice is certainly not to be recommended, for it spoils both the taste and the appearance of the tartlets. Time to bake them, about a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, about 1d. each. Sufficient, half a pound of pastry will make a moderate-sized dish of tartlets.