JAM TARTS

Last Sunday I went to a friend for Sunday Brunch. There about thirty of us and we all had to contribute some food item. I contributed two items: Jam Tarts & Scrambled Eggs & Cheese in Crossaint Rolls. The egg dish was a last minute dish. The hostess was afraid she would not have breakfast dishes so I offered to make something else-scrambled eggs & cheese in a butter crossaint. This was a hot item and went quickly,

The jam tarts were enjoyed and appreciated, but it's hard to tell people the kind of effort that went into making them. It took making three different batches to get the tarts I wanted. I used miniature muffin pans-the first time greased, the next two times, not greased. I made miniature pie crusts three times. The first batch fell apart; the second batch was too much pie crust and the third batch was just right.

JAM TARTS

Take 3 ounces of cream cheese and mix together with 1/2 cup butter or margarine. Add 1 cup flour and 1/8 tsp salt. Mix together, cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Take less than a tablespoon, but more than a teaspoon of dough, flatten out with floured hand and place gently in minature muffin pan.

Fill each pie crust with less than half of a teaspoon of jam or preserves. Too much and the jam overflows the muffin cup and makes it impossible to get tart out of tin. Any type of preser works. I happened to have on hand: apple jam, raspberry preserves, strawberry preserves and orange marmalade.

Bake at 400F for 16 minutes or until the pie crust is golden. Move to a cooling rack and get tarts out as fast as you can onto a plate. If you leave them to cool off, they will fall apart later.

Nobody appreciated the effort I made in making these tarts-3 days worth of learning and re-doing my work. Buying triple the amount of ingredients orginally needed. All they saw, was what looked like a simple pastry filled with jam. It was so much more....