Jam Tarts for Malory Towers

I grew up reading Enid Blyton. Actually she was the only author known to me for a long time. I started with the St Clare's series and slowly graduated to other. Malory towers is another feather in Blyton's cap of school series. The book talks about the adventures of Darrell Rivers and is said that the book is fashioned on the Scottish boarding school of St Leonards School. At that time, I used to day dream and imagined myself as a character and when my father (almost) got a posting in UK, I wanted to be there. Such was my fantasy which obviously came to nought !

I went back to my childhood after reading the book - I chose the first part- again for bookclub last month and I did want to miss the party. I had made jam tarts for Darrell. I had adapted my recipe from Deeba's ruby petit fours though with a little change.

Ingredients:

All Purpose Flour: 1.5 cups
Butter: 1/3 cup

Castor Sugar: 1 tbsp
Chilled Water: 3-4 tbsp

Jam: few tbsp : your choice

Preparation:

Sift flour in a bowl.Add in cubed chilled butter and pinch and fluff and mix with your fingers to get a coarse mix.Mix in sugar.Add enough water to make a soft dough. Do not overwork. Chill the dough in the fridge for atleast 20 minutes.

Take out the dough.Roll it out to a thin pastry and line the mini tart shells or whatever size tart pans you have.

Gently bring together the remaining dough and roll it out again. Cut different patterns or shapes from it using small cookie cutters or appropriate devices.Keep aside.

Spoon around 1 tbsp of jam on the pastry in the tart pans.Top the jams with the pattern pastry.

Bake in a preheated oven at 190C for about 10-15 minutes, till the edges of the tart start browning and the jam bubbles and spreads and a heady aroma permeats the house. :P

Take out,cool for around 1-2 minutes in the shell,after which let them cool and set completely in the wirerack. Serve as a snack or a part of breakfast or even as a dessert for picnic just as Darrell had hers.

Make sure you add only lesser amount of jam as the jam will melt,bubble and spread a lot.You can see from the pics that the mini cookie tart was topped with two stars which were completely immersed after baking.
You can also bake the tart shells prior to filling and then fill them with melted jam as I had seen in the original recipe.

Lets see what others are cooking for Darrell and her friends at the BookClub.