Ecclefechan Tarts

5 from 4 votes

Scottish Ecclefechan Tarts made with a sweet shortcrust pastry and a filling of light brown sugar, butter, mixed dried fruit and walnuts, some delicious festive tarts that make a wonderful alternative to the classic mince pies. The tarts have a hint of caramel coming from the rich butter and sugar filling, and go down a treat with a hot drink at Christmas.

Prep Time15

Cook Time25

Chilling Time30

Total Time1 10

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Scotland

Servings: tarts

Calories: 240kcal

Author: Daniela Apostol

Ingredients

For the sweet shortcrust pastry

150 g plain flour (1 ¼ cups)
75 g unsalted butter, cold (⅓ cups)
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 small egg
1 tablespoon full-fat milk

For the filling

150 g mixed dried fruit ( 1 ¼ cups)
50 g chopped walnuts (½ cup)
1 egg
100 g light brown sugar (½ cup)
75 g butter (⅓ cup)
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

To make the pastry, cut the butter into cubes.
Sift the flour in a large bowl, add the cubed butter, and use your fingertips to rub the flour and butter together until it resembles breadcrumbs.
Add the sugar and mix.
Crack in the egg, add the milk, and knead the dough gently until it's smooth.
Cover the dough with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Flour the work surface, and use a rolling pin to roll the dough to a thickness of 3 mm.
Use a large cookie cutter (mine is 10cm in diameter) to cut out rounds - reuse the dough until you get 12 rounds.
Arrange the rounds onto the muffin tin holes and refrigerate the tin until the filling is ready.
To make the filling, melt the butter and transfer it to a bowl together with the sugar.
Mix them, add the egg beaten lightly, followed by the lemon juice, and mix again.
Add the walnuts and dried fruit, and mix to combine.
Divide the mixture evenly between each muffin tin and bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) for 25 minutes until the pastry is golden and the filling is set and risen.
Leave the tarts to cool down in the tin for 10 minutes, then carefully pop them out and leave them to cool down completely on a cooling rack.

Video

Notes

If you'd like to see the ingredients listed in cups and ounces, please check the US Customary Link.
Also, the amount of ingredients changes depending on the servings, so click on the number listed to change it to the number you prefer.
Chilling the dough is a crucial step, as the pastry does tend to shrink quite a bit in the oven - that's the case with all butter pastry though, and unless you bake it blind beforehand, you will end up will too little pastry.
An important step is rolling the dough thin, as otherwise you end up with tarts that have more pastry than filling.
Do not overbeat the butter and sugar for the filling, there is no need for a hand mixer, just mix them lightly with a spatula, otherwise the filling becomes marshmallowy.
Do not fill the tarts too much with filling, as this rises in the oven and will overflow, making the tarts less pretty and sticky too. I would fill them only about half or 3 quarters, but not all the way to the top.
You can sprinkle some icing sugar over the tarts once the cool down for a more festive look, but that's entirely optional.

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