Quick Portuguese Tarts by Jamie Oliver - made mini

I first made these as part of the Portuguese chicken dish from Jamie's 30 minute meals and I couldn't believe how easy they are. They almost make themselves while you get on with the rest of the dish.
The recipe is easily scalable and only really limited by the amount of mini muffin pans you have.
I tripled the last batch of these and yielded 36 tasty little morsels - they were all gone within an hour - along with the Smoked salmon, asparagus and cheese tart I took along to our friend Hugh's rooftop BBQ.
See my take on Jamie's recipe after the jump. 

Ingredients (for 12 tarts):

• 1 sheet of pre-rolled puff pastry - defrosted
• Ground cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 1 orange
• plain flour, for dusting
• 125g crème fraîche - if unavailable or too pricey, just use sour cream
• 5 tablespoons golden caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 200C

While your pastry sheet is still on it's blue backing, prinkle over a few good pinches of ground cinnamon, then roll the pastry into a Swiss roll shape and cut into 12 rounds. I cut it into quartes first and then each quarter into 3, this helps ensure they are all roughly the same size.

Put these into 12 of the holes in a mini muffin tin, (I give it a light spray with canola oil to make things a little easier) and use your thumbs to stretch and mould the pastry into the holes so the bottom is flat and the pastry comes up to the top. Put on the top shelf of the oven and cook for around 8 to 10 minutes (set the timer), or until lightly golden.

Spoon the crème fraîche/sour cream into a small bowl. Add the egg, vanilla paste or extract, 1 tablespoon of golden caster sugar and the zest of 1 orange (Ikea sells great zesters that work really well). Mix well.

Take the muffin tin out of the oven, and use a teaspoon to press the puffed up pastry back to the sides and make room for the filling. Spoon the crème fraîche mixture into the tart cases, and return to the top shelf of the oven. Set the timer for 8 minutes.

While they are cooking, put a small saucepan on a high heat. Squeeze in the juice from the zested orange and add 4 tablespoons of golden caster sugar. Stir and keep a good eye on it, but remember caramel can burn badly so don’t touch or taste.

When the tarts are ready, let the cool for a little while then pour some caramel over each tart (they’ll still be wobbly, but that’s good). I used Jamie's own kitchen blowtorch to brulee mine a little, but that's just my preference, you could also just put them aside to set.

An awesome variation of this can be made by omitting the orange and using freshly grated ginger to make my Ginger Brulee tarts (link to come).

Have you made these tarts? or made your own special twist? drop me a line in the comments below.

Enjoy

LVB