Strawberry and orange mini Bakewell tarts

One egg (yes, just one egg) goes a long way: it actually makes 10 of these Bakewell Tarts to be precise!

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Move over Mr Kipling! These delicious Bakewells are easy to make and have a natural taste rather than the somewhat synthetic commercial Bakewells. I have gone for strawberry and orange as the key flavours, making the fondant icing using orange juice for that lovely citrus zing it brings.

Any jam works here but if you want to reduce the sweetness, you can use crushed or puréed fruit -just make sure you use enough of the pulp so it has body rather than being liquid. Puréed dried apricots work a treat here!

Similarly, you can flavour the icing with lemon, lime, grapefruit, passionfruit juice……

And feel absolutely free to add a camp retro garnish to the tarts with a glacé cherry taking pride of place on top!

Not confident with pastry? Not a problem here….

Commercial shortcrust pastry is fine to use here, but I have give a recipe for shortcrust pastry, flavoured with orange zest.

There is no need to blind-bake the pastry with these tarts, making them even simpler to make. You just roll out the pastry, pat into deep muffin tins, add the jam, sponge batter and bake.

If you want to become more confident with pastry making, check out my earlier post, which has full recipes and tips for perfecting shortcrust, choux and laminated pastries: pastry

Recipe: strawberry and orange mini Bakewell tarts – makes 10

Shortcrust pastry*:

• 160g plain flour
• 40g lard
• 40g unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• finely grated zest of 1 large orange (the juice will be used in the icing)
• cold water to mix

*alternatively, use about 250g bought shortcrust pastry

Sponge:

• 1 large egg
• 50g self-raising flour
• 50g very soft unsalted butter or margarine
• 50g caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground almonds
• 1 teaspoon almond extract, optional

Jam:

• a few tablespoons good quality strawberry jam

Icing:

• about 200g fondant icing sugar
• juice from 1 orange to mix, plus extra (or water) if needed

you will also need deep muffin tins, well buttered and base-lined with a circle or square greaseproof paper (which helps them come out of the tins once baked)

(1) Preheat the oven to 170C (fan).

(2) If making the pastry, put the flour, salt, sugar and orange zest into a bowl and add the lard and butter. Rub in lightly until the mixture resembled fine breadcrumbs. Add enough cold water, stirring in with a flat-bladed knife, to form a soft but not sticky dough. Ideally wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes or so, which will make it easier to roll out.

NB: alternatively, add the dry ingredients to a food processer and pulse just until the fats are broken down into tiny pieces. Add the water a bit at a time until the dough forms a soft ball.

(3) Roll out the dough thinly on a lightly floured surface and cut out circles: I use a large round cutter.

(4) Press the dough circles lightly into the muffin tins: don’t worry if the pastry folds over itself as you do this, as it can be smoothed out:

(5) Using your finger, lightly pat the pastry against the inside of the muffin holes so it is smoother. Try to get the pastry all the way up to the top of the holes: if it goes up above the muffin holes, it can be trimmed with a sharp knife if you wish.

(6) Add a teaspoon of jam to the base of each pastry.

(7) Make the sponge mixture but putting all the sponge ingredients into a bowl and beating with a wooden spoon just until you get a smooth batter.

(8) Add 1-2 teaspoons sponge mixture on top of the jam and lightly flatten off.

(9) Bake for about 20 minutes or until the sponge is well risen and golden brown. Leave in their tins for a couple of minutes before carefully lifting them out of their muffin holes and onto a wire rack to cool fully.

(10) Once cooled, lightly pat down the sponge tops, which will give more space between the top of the sponge and the top of the pastry for the icing to go. If the sponges have domed, cut off the domes so you have a flat sponge top: cook’s perk to eat!

(11) For the icing, add the icing sugar to a small bowl and mix in enough orange juice to give a thickish icing: it should be able to slowly fall off a spoon and just about hold its shape. Add more orange juice (or water) if it is too thick.

(12) Spoon the icing on top of the cooled sponges, coming up to the pastry rims.

(13) Sprinkle over some grated oragne zest or thin slices of peel and leave to set fully.