Tarts are a special dessert to me. In my Mom’s family, we always had Chess Tarts, usually made by my grandmother Meme, at special gatherings like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Before she moved into a retirement home, Meme taught me to make her tarts and gave me many of her tart pans so that I could make them on my own. So anytime I get to pull out her tart pans is special but I don’t think I’ve ever used them to make anything but Meme’s chess tarts, using her recipe for the pastry and the filling.

But, inspired by a recent post from Feeding My Enthusiasms for what Elle calls St George’s Chocolate and Qunice Jam Tarts, I decided to branch out. These tarts consist of pastry topped with jam (she used quince, I made some with apricot and some with orange marmalade) which is then topped with a filling made of dark chocolate and ground almonds. They are apparently reminiscent of English Bakewell tarts, though those usually don’t have chocolate in them. I made my own pastry instead of using ready made pie dough. I also used a new recipe for pastry, which I altered from a recipe my friend Stirling found at Cook’s Illustrated. It uses vodka to replace some of the water, which makes the pastry easier to work with but doesn’t make the pastry tough. The vodka evaporates while it bakes, and it apparently doesn’t react with the gluten in the flour the way water does to make it tough.

The tarts turned out pretty well. The new pastry was buttery and flaky, though a little less brown than my usual pastry, and the chocolate filling was rich but nicely complemented by the fruit in the jam. The apricot and orange were both good, but Matt and I both like the orange ones better. I didn’t really think the almonds added all that much though. I felt like they just made the filling heavier without adding much flavor. I think next time I would try using hazelnuts instead, which I think might go better with the chocolate anyway. But overall, it’s a recipe I would recommend. If you want to try the filling, click here for Elle’s recipe. My modified pastry recipe follows.

Sweet Pastry

3 c flour, sifted
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 c butter (1 stick), cut into slices
1/2 c shortening
1/4 c ice water
1/4 c vodka

Measure out sifted flour. Sift dry ingredients. Cut in butter and sugar. Add ice water and vodka, and mash together until just blended. If the dough won’t stick together, add a little more vodka. Pull off a small piece of dough and roll out to fit in tart pan. Place the dough in the pan, and use the palm of one hand to cut off the extra dough from around the pan. Reuse the extra dough scraps for the next tart. This makes enough pastry for a couple dozen tarts or two pies.

This is another recipe that we always make at Christmas and that I don’t remember having any other time of year. They are a pecan shortbread cookie rolled in powdered sugar (the ones on the left in the picture). I’ve also seen similar cookies by other names, such as Mexican wedding cookies. We make ours in a skinny finger shape though, so we call them nutty fingers or lady fingers.

The recipe makes a bunch, but they are small and tend to go fast. They are slightly more labor intensive than some cookies, but they are absolutely delicious. The recipe comes from my grandmother, who always made them when my mom was growing up.

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This is my mom’s recipe for pecan toffee, which she thinks came from Better Homes and Gardens several years ago. It’s another one of those things that’s special because we only make it at Christmas. Like the Date Rock Cookies, I’m not putting a picture, but they’re on the platter with the Nutty Fingers on that post.

You might also like:

• Nutty Fingers
• Date Rock Cookies
• Mocha Peppermint Bark Cookies
• Peppermint Bark
• Christmas Cookies

Pecan Toffee

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c chopped pecans, divided
1 c sugar
1 c butter, softened
1/3 c water
5 1.55 ounce milk or dark chocolate bars, chopped into small pieces (I prefer dark. And of course, the better the chocolate you use, the better the toffee)

Special Equipment:

Candy thermometer

Line a 15″x10″ jellyroll pan with heavy duty aluminum foil.l Lightly grease the foil. Sprinkle 1 c of the chopped pecans to within 1″ of the edge.

Bring sugar, butter, and 1/3 c water to a boil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly about 12 minutes, or until a candy thermometer reads 300 degrees. This is the “hard crack stage.” You can also check this by dropping a few threads of the candy into a glass of ice water to cool. The threads should then crack when you bend them rather than stretching.

Pour over pecans. Quickly sprinkle with chocolate pieces (so they melt). Let stand 30 s. sprinkle with remaining 1/2 c of pecans. Chill 30 minutes (or until hard) and then break up the toffee into bite size pieces. Store in an airtight container.

This recipe comes from my grandmother Pat, who I think got it from her mother as well. I’m not putting in a picture, as the only one I have is also in the Nutty Finger post. Mom and I often make them for Christmas, although this year we had some that Pat made instead. They are one of Matt’s favorites, and another that we only have at Christmastime. It makes a bunch of cookies, but you can keep the dough in the fridge if you don’t have time to make them all at once. They are a dense chewy cookie with lots of dates, nuts and raisins — delicious!

You might also like:

• Nutty Fingers
• Pecan Toffee
• Mocha Peppermint Bark Cookies
• Peppermint Bark
• Christmas Cookies

Date Rock Cookies

Ingredients:

1 c butter
1 1/2 c brown sugar
3 eggs
3 c flour
1 t baking soda in 3 T boiling water
1 t cinnamon
1 lb chopped dates
1 lb chopped pecans
1 lb raisins

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix all ingredients together. This will give you mixer a real workout! Drop by teaspoons on ungreased cookie sheets and bake for about 9 minutes.

So in case you haven’t noticed, I’m on a baking kick lately. Last weekend seemed like a good time to make some cookies. I made three kinds: Heidi’s Minty Chocolate Christmas Cookies, Espresso-Toffee Shortbread Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan via Smitten Kitchen, and Madeleines. Below are a few more details about how the cookies turned out, and the recipe for the madeleines (the other two recipes you can get from the links above).

Minty Chocolate Christmas Cookies

These have a short, crunchy chocolate cookie with a peppermint filling. I made the cookies pretty much as directed in the recipe, except I used baking sugar instead of powdered sugar, and white flour. For the filling, I used half powdered sugar and half baking sugar (I ran out of powdered). I didn’t want to use cream since I was giving them as gifts and thought they might be around for a few days, but I didn’t really want to just add water. So I creamed the sugar with a few tablespoons of butter to make a buttercream type frosting, and then added enough water to get the consistency right before adding the peppermint extract.

The cookies were very good, and I liked the balance of the rich, dark cookie with the mint frosting. However, they got soft very quickly (the next day). So, if you’re going to try them, I would recommend not filling them until just before serving, which I feel silly for not having thought of in the first place.

Espresso-Toffee Shortbread Cookies

In Deb of Smitten Kitchen’s post about these, she suggested substituting chopped Ghiradelli Toffee Interlude bar instead of the chocolate. I did this, and it was good, but I honestly am not sure the toffee added all that much; it mostly just tasted like chocolate chips, maybe because the coffee flavor covered it up? I also used very strong espresso instead of instant espresso powder because I didn’t want to buy any. They were good, but I think the coffee flavor would’ve been good if it had been a bit more pronounced. Overall, these are delicious and I will definitely make them (or some variation) again. Also, the rolling the dough out in a bag trick is a really great idea.

I make madeleines with a slightly adapted version of the recipe that came with my madeleine pan, which in turn came from Williams-Sonoma. As you can see in the photo, I use a metal non-stick pan, and it works very well. I know some people like these new-fangled silicone molds. After my recent experience trying silicone muffin tins, as well as several too many headaches from silicone swim caps, I’ve decided to try to avoid silicone if at all possible (though I realize computers make it a little hard to escape).

You might also like:

• Nutty Fingers
• Pecan Toffee
• Date Rock Cookies
• Mocha Peppermint Bark Cookies
• Peppermint Bark

Madeleines

Ingredients:

5 T unsalted butter
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 t baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 egg
Grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1 t vanilla (or orange-flower water)
1/3 c granulated sugar

Special equipment:

Madeleine pan (to make one dozen regular sized madeleines)

Instructions:

1. Melt the butter. Brush a little in the mold of the madeleine pan. Place pan in the freezer. Reserve remaining butter.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.
3. Lightly beat together the egg, lemon zest, vanilla, and sugar.
4. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture and beat until well combined. Beat in remaining butter just long enough to incorporate.
5. Refrigerate batter for about an hour. (This is probably not absolutely necessary, but I’ve read that it helps get the characteristic madeleine “hump.”)
6. Preheat oven to 375 F. Fill molds half full with batter.
7. Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until the tops are golden and the edges start to brown. Unmold onto a wire rack. (Better to put the shell side down; the tops may get dents in them from the wire rack.)
8. If desired, dust with powdered sugar. (I usually don’t.)