Apple & Blueberry Jam Tarts

Hello there (-: 

Haze has been crazy around here in Singapore, with our Pollutants Standard Index (more commonly known as PSI) hitting an all-time high since 2006 of 140 currently. When the air is this bad outdoors, it isn't very healthy so go out so since we're indoors, let's do some baking! 

A few days back, I found a jar of jam in my fridge. I don't normally eat bread with spreads - my parents do though - so I haven't tasted that jam before. It was "Apple & Blueberry" and I took a spoon to try a bit and it was amazing (': Extremely sweet, yet a bit tart and the apple and blueberry flavours really stood out, with small crunchy chunks of apple in it. I wanted to eat it but of course, I shouldn't be eating it straight out of the jar without anything and I didn't like bread so I decided to make some jam tarts with it (-:

This is a really simple recipe that only requires five ingredients so this is something you should try. Here is the recipe for

APPLE & BLUEBERRY JAM TARTS

Ingredients:

1. 250g plain flour

2. Pinch of salt

3. 100g butter

4. 2-3 tablespoons of cold water

5. Apple & blueberry jam (or any of your favourite fruit jams/ preserves)

To be perfectly honest, I am a person who is extremely unprecise with the measurements of my ingredients. For example, for my butter, I just used roughly half of a 225g block of butter and I rarely measure (if I even do) my ingredients to the exact point. 

The first part of this recipe would be to make the dough for the lovely, flaky tart pastry. Make sure that your butter and water is cold, and not room temperature! 

(sorry but the butter looks really good whole) 

1. Combine your flour and salt into a bowl and mix well.

2. Chop up your butter into little cubes to make it easier for the next step.

3. Place your butter cubes into the flour and salt mixture. Work fast from here to ensure that the butter still stays cold and doesn't melt that much. 

4. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour. (I think my hands were quite warm - I mean of course, due to the heat in Singapore - so the butter melted a bit, which is not cool) You should get a breadcrumb like texture

I had quite a few large chunks of butter that wasn't that well combined into my flour because everything was melting quite quickly so I took them out and threw them away (besides, I did add a bit too much butter, more than the recipe called for)

5. Add 2-3 tablespoons of cold water one by one and mix well, stopping once the breadcrumb like dough has formed a nice smooth ball of dough.

6. Cover this in plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator for a good 30 mins! (-: 

- ba da da dum after 30 mins - 

7. Preheat your oven to 180 degree Celsius

8. Grease your tart tray with butter (I don't have a tart tray, so I'm making do with cupcake/ muffin tins, which worked perfectly well so I'd suggest getting this if you intend to make both tarts and cupcakes, if you don't mind your tarts having a smooth rim to them) 

9. Dust flour over your work surface, hands and rolling pin to ensure that the dough doesn't stick when you roll it out.

10. Fetch your nice round lump of dough from the fridge and roll it out fairly thinly (it's quite up to you, whether or not you like thick or thin tart pastry)

11. Use a round glass to cut out circle pieces of the dough.

12. With the leftover dough around the side, gather them and form it back into a round ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and pop it back into the fridge to chill again before taking it out and rolling it out again after your first batch is done.

13. Push your little circles into the tray (I had to stretch mine a little bit before putting it in, and also stretch it up the sides) 

14. Go to town with your lovely sweet jam! (': Fill your little dough cups with it! (note of caution: although jam is amazing, don't be so greedy and put too much because the jam might overflow when baking and that's not a pretty sight.)

15. Bake your lovely dough + jam creations for around 15-20 mins (mine took 20 mins) or until the pastry is golden brown and very delicious looking.

16. When they are done, take them out and let them cool on a cooling rack before digging in (evidently, I couldn't wait and almost burnt my tongue - I always do that when I bake) When they came out fresh out of the oven, the jam was bubbling a little and they looked divine. 

And there you have it (': Lovely apple and blueberry jam tarts! It only took 5 ingredients that you might probably already have in your home and apart from the 30mins that was needed for the dough to chill, this is a really quick and simple recipe. 

Yumzy.