Jam Tomorrow & Jam Yesterday

D. hardly can go in to work now without some kind of goody in hand. He’s run through his repertoire of cakes and pies and after fulfilling a scones-like-my-nan’s request, has received another query. “How about a strawberry tart?” someone suggested.

The problem with a strawberry tart is that in two weeks it’s November and we’re well away from the season where strawberries will come up from the earth. There are no berries in the store that anyone would want to eat, and cranberries are, sadly, a New World food. After considering frozen strawberries (ugh) and pondering some other kind of fruit (meh), we decided to try to make jam tarts.

Jam tarts are kind of a British thing anyway. Most of the time, they’re seen in miniature – as cookies that look like they’ve been thumbprinted with jam, or ramekin-sized goodies that are split in fourths. In order to truly make a jam tart, one needs a tart pan; not having one of those, we settled for eight ceramic ramekins and one spring-formed pan, and whipped up a thick, sweet crust.

• 1 1/2 cups (210 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (70 grams) stone-ground cornmeal or polenta
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 9 tablespoons (4 1/2 ounces or 130 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
• 1/4 c. grated lemon rind
• 2 large eggs, whole
• 1 large egg, separated
• 1/8 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 1/3 to 1 3/4 cups (450 grams) jam (see Note above; I used the smaller amount) or marmalade
• 2 tablespoons (30 grams) coarse-crystal or granulated sugar

Mix your dry ingredients – the flour, cornmeal, lemon rind, baking powder and salt – together in a bowl. Using an electric mixer cream together your butter and 1/2 cup or sugar until smooth. Add the eggs and almond extract and beat until combined. Gradually sift in the flour and mix until the dough comes together like crumbs.

Take about half of the dough, wrap it securely in plastic, and refrigerate for minimum one hour, or you could go Smitten Kitchen’s route and freeze it for half an hour. Whatever works.

We’re not quite sure what happened with the crust. When Smitten Kitchen made this, it came through together easily enough. We, thinking we knew best, made a few changes: first, we added two eggs, instead of a single egg plus a yolk, as the recipe called for. We grated the cold butter as we usually do for crusts and pastries, though the recipe calls for room temperature butter. We ended up with a sandy, sticky dough, and T. was disappointed, because she’s been jonesing for farm-looking autumn stuff, and wanted to use her new rooster cookie cutter, or, barring that, her selection of leaves. Or, probably both, knowing her. The crust was just too …something for that. Heavy, sandy, sticky… you name it. We should have chilled it for more than fifteen minutes, but …um… we didn’t. We won’t say who’s fault that was. We went with Option B. and patted the crust down into our pan and figured we’d worry about tart top later.

The good thing about jam tarts is that it doesn’t really matter what kind of jam you use, but a word to those not wanting to flail about in a diabetic coma: use a tart jam or halve the amount of sugar in the crust! We had a jar of store-bought strawberry left over from the pirate cake a thousand years ago, unopened in a cabinet because we couldn’t bear to eat it ourselves. (One great thing work people are for: to eat food you wouldn’t otherwise know how to consume.) Our other choice was our lovely tart homemade blackberry jelly. We decided to use the less sweet jam in larger quantities, having some mercy on the health and well-being of D.’s coworkers. (As it turns out, he needn’t have bothered!).

After spreading the jam evenly on the bottom of each of the tart crusts, we rolled out a large piece of crust, and turned it over the pan. Some of it cracked a bit, but we knew it would melt together, and were not really concerned. We perhaps should have been! We had some small pieces left, and decorated the strawberry mini tarts with them, so eaters could tell the jams apart. We topped the crusts with the 2 tbsp. of sugar, and baked the tarts for twenty minutes in the oven.

They were gorgeous, and depanned pretty well. If you don’t plan to depan immediately, USE LINER PAPER ON YOUR PANS. Once the crust cools, it’s really not easy to get out, although it came out of the springform just fine (only the bottom stuck a little). We were surprised by how cookie-like and how unlike pastry the tart crust turned out to be. D. wasn’t fond of it at all, but T. tasted it, and said it reminded her of chewy sugar cookies. However, T. worried again that the strawberry tarts were simply too sweet, but they were among the first to go at D’s office, and the large bramble tart was consumed down to the last bite.

As you can see, the tarts are stacked in the carrier, and ready to ride in the cab. The large tart has been pre-sliced — and it sort of looks cracked, exactly like a cookie. It’s … maybe it’s the flour? We just expected the crust to be not quite so cookiesque. Weird.

Not bad for a first run, but we’ve got a bit of work to do on this one…