I go to an exercise class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. 07:30. Before work. I know. Some might say I’m crazy, but for me, it fits in really well to my routine: I get up, throw on some clothes, scurry to the train station, catch the train across to Clifton (or sometimes I manage to drag Mr M along with me, then we drive over), then have my half hour exercise class and walk to work. Thankfully we have a shower at work, otherwise it would be decidedly unpleasant for everyone I work with!

My instructor Cath, along with one of the other instructors, decided to host a Macmillan Coffee Morning, and knowing that I love to bake, she asked me if I would bake some bits for it.

Perfect excuse to test out my shiny new Pampered Chef stuff that I got on Wednesday!

I had previously bought the tart shaper tool, but only had a 12 cup mini muffin tin, so using it was a little irritating. This time around I treated myself to a 24 cup tin and this gave me to perfect excuse to give it a go! I decided to make some fairly simple tarts, a slight elaboration on jam tarts, also some individual Bakewell tarts, Palmiers, and Cheese Twists.

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Apricot and White Chocolate Mini Tarts Recipe

Ingredients

175g plain flour

a pinch of salt

2tbsp caster sugar

115g unsalted butter

1 medium egg yolk mixed with 2tbsp ice cold water

Apricot jam

50g white chocolate

Method

Put the flour, salt, and sugar into a food processor, and pulse to combine. Add the butter, and process until it resembles crumbs.

Next add the egg yolk/water mixture and process until it just comes together.

Wrap in cling film and chill for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C/ 350F.

Because I have the mini muffin tin and tart shaper, next I just took a small blob of pastry…………….

(sorry, poor quality phone picture alert!)

………………then used the tart shaper……

…….to form the tart cases.

Slightly rustic looking………………… but super quick to use.

Bake for 10 minutes until slightly golden…

Fill with a bit of Apricot jam, then return to the oven for a further 5-10 minutes.

Next, unleash them from their tin, and allow to cool…..

Finally, melt the white chocolate and drizzle over the surface. To do this, I put the chocolate in a sandwich bag, then microwaved it for 2 minutes, snipped off the corner, then drizzled…

So there you have it! It had to be fairly quick and simple, as I was working last night, but I thought they turned out pretty cute, and are a simple addition to make.

With more time, I might make a custom filling, maybe add some spice, but they were quite tasty as was.