Tartlets are small baskets made from unleavened dough. They can serve pates, vegetable purees, salads, sweet creams - absolutely any fillings depending on the taste of the guests. Small open pies, as the French call tartlets, are favorites among the appetizers, and can be eaten cold or hot.
The number of fillings for tartlets is endless - they can be meat, fish or vegetarian, sweet, salty or spicy. Tartlets can be baked separately or with toppings. The dough for miniature baskets can be puff, custard or shortbread. Sometimes you can find cheese baskets.
For classic tartlets, flour, water and butter are used in the following proportions: 2 glasses of flour, a pack of butter, a pinch of salt and water in such an amount that the dough turns out to be cool and does not stick to your hands.
When preparing tartlets and toppings, you need to use some rules so that the appetizer turns out to be perfect in appearance and incredibly tasty:
- The finished dough must be kept in the refrigerator for an hour, then it will be much easier to work with it.
- When laying out the dough in a mold, you need to not only tamp it, but also press it down with dry beans or special weights so that the bottom of the basket remains flat and even during baking.
- The basket should have as much filling as possible to make the appetizer as tasty as possible.
- If the filling for the tartlet is dry enough, it is recommended to generously grease the basket with a suitable sauce. This applies, for example, to chicken breasts.
- The ingredients for the salad served in tartlets must be very finely chopped. The only exceptions are those components that will be used as decoration, for example, shrimp.
- In small baskets, you need to put expensive ingredients - caviar or foie gras. Small tartlets are also great for spicy toppings. And for large baskets, salads, a variety of pies, fruit or sweet fillings are ideal.
