Butter raisin tarts

The process of cooking, clicking pictures, keeping a tab on the recipe and finally posting pictures on this blog does get exhausting from time to time. While we are always game enough to cook whatever catches our fancy, every once in a while even we are surprised at our laziness in following through with something so that it ends up on the blog. For instance, it’s been months since we made this chicken biryani. We even clicked and edited a series of perfectly nice process and final pictures. But, I have not been able to write about it despite several attempts.

Something along similar lines, though somewhat different happened with these butter raisin tarts. Around June, we fell in love with the pâte brisée and decided we would do a week of pies for the blog using the same pastry crust. All but one pie were baked in a matter of a couple of weekends. Pictures were clicked and edited, recipes were fine tuned till we hit one of our inexplicable phases. We identified these butter tarts as the perfect addition to the pie week but just couldn’t get around to making them. Many a week have gone by where we have set aside a day to make these tarts but something or the other always managed to come in the way till we finally baked them the weekend before last. After much procrastination, we bring you these overdue butter raisin tarts.

Butter Raisin Tarts
Loosely adapted from Foodiva
(makes about a dozen)

Pâte brisée, enough for one 8–10 in. single crust pie (i.e. half the quantity in the linked recipe)
½ cup dark brown sugar, packed
½ cup honey
1 large egg, at room temperature
½ tsp white vinegar
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup raisins

Filling

1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, honey and butter till they are well combined.

2. Now whisk in the egg, vanilla and vinegar.

Assembly

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C and grease a 12-cup muffin tin.

2. On a lightly-floured work surface, roll out your dough to about ⅛ in. Using a cookie cutter of appropriate size (we used a 3–3.5 in. one) cut the dough into circles, re-rolling the trimmings when necessary.

3. Line each muffin cup with a circle of dough.

4. Sprinkle a few raisins at the bottom of every tart shell.

5. Now pour the filling over the raisins, leaving about 0.75 cm of the tart shell empty on the top. The tart shell will shrink a little when baked and the filling will bubble. This prevents the filling from completely overflowing from the tarts.

6. Bake the tarts at 400°F/200°C for 5 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 375°F/190°C and bake for another 20 minutes until the tart shells turn golden brown and feel hollow to tap.

7. Cool for about 10-minutes before removing the tarts from the muffin tin.