4 Easy Bakes : Easy cheese bikkies, choco fruit tart, apple pie & mince meat pies

Easy cheese bikkies

This is the easiest tastiest biscuits that I have known.  You can just start making them as you're chatting with your friend over tea & it will be done in a jiffy.  The texture inside the biscuit will be layered & spongy so I prefer to call them bikkies!

Ingredients:

200gms cheddar cheese

1 cup flour (maida)

1/2 cup butter

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper or chilli powder

Method

Preheat oven at 230C.  Mix all ingredients by hand until you get a rough dough like mixture.  It must look something like this :

Make tiny portions out of this dough, give each portion a gentle press & place them on a tray lined with aluminium foil.

Bake them for 10-12 mins until they turn brown on top.  Take them out, wait until they cool down completely & only then take them off the foil.  Store them in air tight containers.  You can make the dough in large quantities & leave it in the fridge for later use.

Basic tart shell recipe

Tarts are easy to make once you get the pastry right.  Once you have your pastry, just bake them in tartlet pans & add whatever it is that you fancy!  Chocolate, fruits, cream, meringue anything at all.

Ingredients 

300gms plain flour

2 tbsp cold water

125gms cold butter cubed 

The crucial bit here is to keep the butter chilled & the dough cool.  The dough must be taken out of the fridge just before you plan to bake.  You can add sugar to the dough if you plan to make a sweet tart & maybe even use unsalted butter.  I am using salted butter and sugar here & it doesnt interfere with the taste of filling.

Method

Mix all ingredients to form a dough & roll it out to form a 1-2 inch base.  Lightly grease the tartlet pans.  Cut the dough into circles & line them inside the tartlets.  My tartlet pans have sharp edges so I use them to cut into the dough.  Press down gently to make the dough line the tartlet pans firmly. Make a few pricks with a fork on the base.  This helps the heat to escape & bake evenly.

To ensure perfect tart shells, layer butter paper over the tartlets & place some chickpeas or pastry weights to hold the base down.  Bake for 10 mins, remove weights & bake for another 5mins or until they turn golden brown.

Fruit chocolate tart

This random tart was just created with the few things I had left in my fridge.  A couple of dried berries that I use in cakes, one good navel orange & I always have stock of cooking chocolate so I just played with these three to create this.  Follow the instructions mentioned above to get the pastry right & fill it with these

Filling

1 orange segment per tart

stewed fruits : I took a tablespoon each of dried cranberries, blueberries, prunes chopped them n boiled them for 5mins in very little water.  

chocolate of your choice

Method

Inside each tart place a spoon of the stewed fruit, drench with melted chocolate & decorate with an orange segment!  You can add brandy to the stewed berries & use whipped cream instead of melted chocolate and make your tart all the more rich!

Apple pie 

This is again an improvised version of the classic apple pie.  In my honest opinion, adding a few spices like nutmeg & cinnamon to apple just takes it to a whole new level in terms of flavour & fragrance.  You will be amazed not just by how it tastes but how your entire kitchen will have that warm fruity baking aroma.  Again, you can follow instructions for the pastry mentioned above.

Ingredients

pastry dough (as directed in the recipe above)

6 tablespoons of butter

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 cup water

4 red apples peeled, cored & cut into thin slices.  

handful of toasted cashewnuts

Method

Preheat oven to 230C for 20mins.  Melt butter in a sauce pan.  Add butter, cinnamon & nutmeg powder followed by sugar.  Stir in the sugar until it dissolves & the entire mixture thickens. 

It is better to use tartlets or a single 9" tart pan than deep dishes because the crust does not get the right golden texture at the bottom & will require longer cooking time.

Slightly grease the tart pan & line it with the pastry dough.  Layer the apples on the pastry & pour the sauce over it.  Throw in the toasted cashewnuts. You can either cover the tart pan entirely with the pastry or just cut out stripes & cover it in a criss-cross fashion like I have done. 

I was trying to finish the pastry dough that I had made for the fruit tart but I ran short of it to cover the pie but my random stripes worked somehow! 

Seal the upper stripes of pastry with the bottom lining using a fork & gently pressing it downwards.  Brush the stripes with milk.

Place the pie in the preheated oven & reduce the temperature to 175C after the first 10mins & continue to bake until the apple mixture is bubbling, the caramelised juices ooze out & the upper stripes turn golden.  The total baking time should not exceed 40mins.  This is what it looks like at the end 

If only I had spent some extra time getting the stripes set in an orderly fashion it could have looked a lot better but I was in a hurry & running short of pastry dough :(  The looks went unnoticed thanks to the awesome aroma in my kitchen & awesome taste ;)

Mince meat pies

Ingredients 

250gms minced meat

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 cup fresh green peas

2 onions finely chopped

1" piece ginger grated

4 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 green chillies slit length-wise

1 tsp garam masala powder or 5 spice powder

1tbsp coriander leaves (cilantro)

salt to taste

1 egg to brush the pastry

Method

Heat oil in a heavy bottom frying pan.  Stir fry onion until they brown.  Add garlic, ginger, chillies, garam masala powder & salt.  Add mince meat & mix thoroughly so that they dont form lumps.  Keep stirring until they change color evenly.  Add 3/4th cups of water & let it simmer for 30mins.  Finally add the green peas, lemon juice, coriander leaves & simmer until the peas are done. Adjust seasoning.  You can add pepper if you prefer it to  be more spicy.

Follow the tart pastry recipe mentioned above.  Slightly grease the tartlet pans & line them with pastry dough.  Fill each tart with the mince meat mixture.  I used potatoes instead of peas in my recipe.

Cover each of these tartlets with some more pastry dough & bind the edges with a fork.  Pierce the top of each tartlet.  Brush each tartlet with beaten egg.

Place these in a preheated oven at 200C & bake for 20mins or until they turn golden brown.  Remove them from the oven, allow it to cool & store them in air tight containers.  They will remain good for 3-4days.