Recipe: Mini Strawberry Lemon Tarts with Biscuit Base

I’m not a food blogger by any means, but I love to experiment with recipes and baking gives me a break from too many hours staring at screens. I like to share some of these with you and thought, since it’s summer and all, I’d take advantage of the great British strawberry.

I also just bought some mini ceramic tart dishes from Anthropologie, so I wanted to test them out. Craving a good old American graham cracker crust and not wanting to walk all the way to Partridges, I decided to improvise and try my luck some good old English Hobnobs… The result was tasty but needs some improvements, as I’ll explain along the way! Feel free to leave suggestions.

Ingredients (for two 13cm tarts): 

• 1 1/4 cups of crushed plain Hobnobs
• 83g melted butter
• 1 3/4 tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 113g cream cheese
• 37g brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• A few handfuls of strawberries
• A few spoonfuls of apricot jam
• Small splash of water to dilute jam

Preheat oven to 175C.

Pop Hobnobs in a blender to blitz them to smithereens.

Melt butter, measure out sugar and combine with Hobnobs.

Press the crust into the bottom of your tart dishes. I also press mine up around the sides as you would with graham cracker crust, but in this case, it all slid down to the bottom for a buttery biscuit base, which was fine, but later hardened up when it was chilling in the fridge. So maybe best to walk to Partridges next time for those graham crackers instead.

You’ll want to bake the crust for 15 minutes and take it out and let it cool.

Once the crust has cooled, beat cream cheese, sour cream and brown sugar until it’s fluffy and smooth. the sugar should be dissolved.

Add in vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice.

Spread the lemon filling into the tart dishes on top of the crust. Top with strawberries (or fruit of your choice).

Microwave a few spoonfuls of apricot jam mixed with a small splash of water so it thins out, and brush over the top of each tart to glaze. Chill in the fridge for an hour before diving in!

This recipe was inspired by Serious Eats (which is probably a better recipe, but for a bigger tart).

• Perfect for serving up slices of bigger yummy pies and tarts!
• Bought some of these for my dad’s business. They came out awesome.
• On my current cookbook wish list: Stirring Slowly.
• Cute, comfy and uncomplicated everyday dress. And this one too.
• Kitchen art!

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