Mini sweet pastry tarts

This recipe is from joyofbaking .com

Ingredients for cream cheese filling:
Cream cheese-8 oz or 227 gms-1 pkt- room temperature,
Condense milk-1/4 cup,
Zest of one lemon,
Lemon juice-2 tbsp.

Ingredients for  sweet pastry crust:
All purpose flour-1 and 1/2 cup flour,
Butter -1/2 cup-room temperature,
white sugar-1/4 cup,
Egg -1 lightly beaten,
Vanilla essence-1 tsp.

Method: cream cheese filling
Take a bowl and beat the cream cheese with a beater until creamy and smooth( few seconds)

Add condense milk,lemon zest,vanilla essence and lemon juice and beat until smooth.

Taste the filling and you can adjust the sweetness of the filling.

Do not add too much of lemon juice or condense milk as the filling will be too runny.
Transfer the filling to a bowl or cover it and place it in the fridge to cool and thicken.

You can make this filling a day in advance and it can be kept in the fridge for a week.

Mini sweet pastry crust:
Beat butter till light and smooth with an electric beater
Add sugar and beat for couple of minutes till light and fluffy.

Add one beaten egg and beat only for few seconds.Add vanilla essence.

Add the flour and just mix together.

Remove the beater and gather the dough into a ball.

Wrap it in a plastic wrap or cling film.

As the dough is very soft,put it in the freezer for 5 minutes.
Take out from the freezer and place one tbsp of the dough into each greased and floured mini cupcake tray or non stick mini cupcake tray.
Press the dough at the bottom and upsides.

Run a rolling pin to remove the excess dough.

Press the sides again.

Pre heat oven to 200 C or 400 F
Place the tray in the fridge as the oven is pre heating.
After ten minutes,place the tray to bake for 5 minutes.
Reduce the temperature to180 C or 350 F and bake for 15 minutes more or till the top edges are light brown.
Take out the tray and leave it to cool on wire rack for 15 minutes.

As the tarts cool,it will separate around the edges or loosen it using the tip of the knife.
Remove the tarts from the tray and place it on wire rack to cool completely.

Assemble:

Once the tarts are cool completely,fill one heaped tsp of the cream cheese mixture in each tart.

Keep the filled tarts in a container in the fridge and when you plan to serve decorate with any fruit of your liking.

These mini tarts can be kept in the fridge for a week.

Makes 18 mini tarts!