A trip to Vienna

August Bank Holiday weekend saw a bit of a jam-making fest at my house, so I sought out a recipe to use some of it up! Delia's Viennese Tartlets (on page 107 of Delia's Cakes) were not something I had tackled before and since they are filled with jam they seemed perfect.

The recipe is very heavy on butter and flour with a bit of icing sugar and cornflour basically - all ingredients you can usually find in the house without making a special trip. There really isn't much to it - mix all the ingredients then divide between paper cases. The tricky bit was shaping the mixture, because they each needed a well in the middle for the jam to fit into later. The mixture is a stiff one so it wasn't the easiest thing to do, or to make look neat.




They smelled beautiful while baking, and the texture is a strange one - very short and buttery (as Delia describes), like some sort of cross between a fairy cake and a shortbread biscuit. I used up the dregs of my homemade jam - four strawberry, four raspberry and four blueberry. Once they were cool, in went the jam and they were ready to eat.

I'm not sure I would do this again, although they make a nice alternative to jam tarts if a jammy treat is what you're after, and although not quite as neat looking, the tartlet mixture is a lot less hassle than making pastry. They did taste lovely. All in all a successful bake... but it hasn't changed my life.