
Marvellous Maids – of Honour
Quick Stats
Easy
Makes 12
20 minutes bake time
Marvellous Maids – of Honour
Ingredients
- 1 x 320 g pack Jus-Rol, Ready rolled puff pastry
- 200g curd cheese
- 30g candied peel, finely chopped
- 30g caster sugar
- 1 lemon, zest
- 25g ground almonds
- 1 medium free range egg, plus 1 yolk
- 30g raisins
- 2 tblsp good quality lemon curd
Techniques Used
-
How to Roll Puff Pastry
How to Roll Puff Pastry
- For best results when rolling out puff pastry use a large, clean dry area of the work surface and lightly dust it with plain flour.
- Place pastry dough on surface and lightly dust it and the rolling pin with flour.
- Roll pastry firmly, always rolling away from you, give the dough 2-3 rolls.
- Then turn the dough a quarter turn.
- Dust again if necessary and continue rolling out, frequently turning the pastry so it is not always rolled in the same direction as this causes shrinkage.
- When the pastry has increased in size, pick it up to turn by rolling it round the rolling pin.
- Lift the pin with the pastry around it carefully and turn it to lay out and continue rolling. Again this is done to prevent the pastry from stretching as you lift it which in turn would result in shrinkage in baking. Puff pastry should be rolled out to approx. 4-5 mm depth.
- To re- roll puff pastry once you have cut something out from the main piece, layer up all the trimmings, folding to achieve approximately an even stack.
- Press stack lightly together with fingers.
- Then roll out as before.
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200C/180C (fan)/Gas 6
- Unroll the pastry and using a 7.5cm/3″ cutter, carefully cut out 12 discs and line the base of a muffin tray.
- In a bowl, combine the curd cheese, candied peel, sugar, lemon zest and ground almonds. Beat the egg and egg yolk together, add to the curd cheese and mix thoroughly.
- Divide the lemon curd between the pastry cases and top with a heaped teaspoon of the curd cheese mixture and a sprinkling of raisins.
- Bake for 20 minutes, until the mixture has puffed up and golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool. Dust lightly with icing sugar before serving.
Tips
- Take the pastry out of the fridge and remove from the packaging approximately 10 minutes before you are ready to use it, as it will be easier to work with.
- Don’t overfill the pastry cases as the filling will spill over the edges.
- The tarts are delicious served warm or cold!