Yoghurt Orange Tarts

Jamie Oliver has a lot to answer for... All of a sudden my bf is using cook books and wanting to try things he sees on tele. This is good. JO might not be everyone's cup of tea but he's certainly making being a decent cook a challenge that macho men are accepting. My fella is however not a macho man. But he cooks now. And this is good.


We were watching JO's 30 Minute Meals on tele and I saw him make some stupidly easy custard tarts. I quite like these tarts, so I thought that I would give them a go, and I ended up making them for my Tapas for Life fundraiser, since Jamie made them look so easy. Let me tell you, they are SO easy and a crowd pleaser. 

I came across a small hurdle though, in that when I went to make them, I realised I was a noob and had no cream or creme fraiche (as the recipe calls for). Hm. A quick look in my fridge and I have low fat Greek yoghurt. I can't be arsed going to the shops and neither can S, so I decided to just use it. Great choice - they were awesome.


Here's what I did... This recipe makes 6 (I tripled it though, and made quite a few!)


Ingredients
1 sheet puff pastry
ground cinnamon
125g Greek yoghurt (approx 1 cup)
2 eggs (I had 42g eggs, really small)
1 tsp vanilla paste/extract
3 tblsp sugar plus extra for sprinkling
4 tbsp sugar (for the caramel)
1 orange (zest and juice)


Preheat oven to 200C.


Method 
1) Take your puff pastry sheet and sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar, then roll it up.

See those layers of cinnamony, sugary goodness? Yum.

2) Cut the roll into 6 pieces (about an inch each), and then pop each piece into a muffin tray, layered side up. You then use your thumb to squish the pastry down, and then stretch it out and up the sides to make a little cup. 


3) Pop the tray into the oven (bottom shelf) and leave them for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown.


4) In a bowl, combine well the yoghurt, zest of the orange, sugar, vanilla and eggs.


5) Using a dessert spoon, pour a little of the yoghurt mix into the little pastry cups. These aren't meant to be big - the pastry will have shrunk down a little, so you shouldn't need more than a spoonful of mixture per cup.


6) Put the cups back in the oven for 8 minutes.


7) Add 4 tbsp of sugar to a pan with the juice of the orange and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and keep an eye on it, it will start to turn golden brown after a few minutes. When its a golden brown colour turn the heat off - by this stage your tarts aren't far off being done, so the caramel won't go hard.


8) Once you've taken the tarts out of the oven, spoon the caramel over each tart. Make it as neat or rustic as you like.

My oven is much hotter at the back than the front, I discovered. 

Naked tarts.

These are delicious tarts. They aren't that pretty, they're "rustic" little things, but still great! They aren't too sweet, they taste a little like ricotta cake. The orange really comes through, however I couldn't really get much of the cinnamon - next time I'll add more! Once the caramel has set, it kinda bleeds a little all over the top of the custard - this is good, as it covered up the shoddy caramel job I did! It doesn't stay hard for long though. These are best eaten the day after making them, the flavours come together and work themselves out. They're great straight out of the oven, but better if eaten cold, later on. I can imagine this being awesome with orange blossom water too.


This is also my entry to the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop! The theme this month is Layers upon Layers - and puff pastry is layers! As well as the way the bases are made, layering the cinnamon through the pastry... It fits the bill!