Month-of-Mini-Desserts: Candy Tarts

For this recipe, you can buy mini-shortbread tarts or you can make your own. Everyone has a good shortbread cookie recipe, I’ll bet, but if not, here are some links.

Ina Garten’s Shortbread Cookies   

King Arthur’s Flour Shortbread   

Martha Stewart’s Shortbread Recipes  

Here’s the recipe for shortbread I use just as I posted it on Twitter (@Good2Tweat):

ShortBread: Mix .75lb butter+1c sugar. Add 1t van. Mix then +.25t salt+2.5c flour. Chill 30m. Roll, cut out. Bake 20-25m @ 350 degrees

You normally make cookies with these recipes, but you can also cut circles and bake in mini-muffin pan to make tart shells.

You’ve seen them: Shortbread tarts with Lemon Curd, Blueberry Pie Filling, Cheesecake, and so on. Delicious, but ho hum!

 

I decided to experiment. I placed grocery store candies in tart shells and here’s what I got. In this

picture, I placed a Hershey’s Kiss, Snickers, malted milk balls, dark chocolate square, and two stacked mini Peppermint Patties.

I baked them for about 10-15 minutes (eyeball the meltiness) and let them cool on a cookie rack. Here’s what they looked like melted. I actually had to stir the chocolate square and kiss with a toothpick because they held their shapes. Go

figure, huh.

Try out a variety of favorite candies that might be meltable. Milky Way, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and so on are all possible. I’d try M&Ms if I had any around, just to see what happens. Experiment. No real recipe for this treat. But your guests will love having the variety of tastes and textures.

DH’s RATING: 4 Tongues Up (the average)

His favorite was the crunchy malted milk balls and his least favorite was sticky Snickers! Huh? The others were in-between, but he liked them all to some degree.