My latest party recipe: Sweet Potato Mini-Tarts.

I got rave reviews on my sweet potato casserole with cranberry-macadamia topping at Christmas, so I decided to adapt the recipe for use as a mini party dessert / appetizer. Last week I gave you the run down on making the tartlet shells… they were very easy and inexpensive to make, but if you’re pressed for time, you can use any type of pre-made appetizer shells for this recipe.
The same ideas can of course be adapted for other types of mini-pies, but I’ll tell you these were certainly a hit at this weekend’s gathering!

So, check out the step-by-step in the photo-recipe below! The actual recipe follows.

Photo-Recipe – Sweet Potato Mini-Tarts

1. Wash and slice sweet potatoes, 2. Boil or roast until soft, 3. When cool enough to handle, peel., 4. Puree with other ingredients, 5. Pureed Filling, 6. ‘Homemade’ Tart Shells to make: Make Tart Shells How-to, 7. Fill plastic bag or piping bag, 8. Cut hole for piping, 9. Pipe into Shells, 10. Filled Shells, 11. Make the topping, 12. Add nuts and fruit, 13. Completed Topping, 14. Top with about a teaspoon of the topping, 15. Baked and ready to eat!

Note: I have promised to write up the recipe for the sweet potato casserole that inspired this, but I haven’t done that yet–I will!! For the tartlets, I figured since the shells were pre-cooked, the filling only needed to be heated through and the toppings toasted, so I left out the eggs and changed the proportions, so the filling for these is closer to a sweet mashed potato, rather than a souffle.

Yield: Makes about 50 mini-tarts

Ingredients:

2-3 Sweet Potatoes (enough to make 2+ cups cooked-Just cook extra if you’re not sure.)
———-
(for each 2-3 cups sweet potato*)
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons Butter (softened)
Dash vanilla
———-
1/3 c brown sugar
2 Tbls butter (firm)
1/4 c flour
~1/2 c dried cranberries
~1/2 c macadamia nuts**
———-
Mini Tart shells (~48)
Make your own ahead of time (easy & cheap!)
or storebought (any type of pastry shell / phyllo shell that holds about 1 ounce – if yours hold more, take that into account in the amount of filling required.)

*Because sizes of sweet potatoes vary, you may end up with more filling than you need, or more than will fit in your food processor! Just go ahead and puree all of it, adjusting the amount of sugar, butter, and milk for larger quantities. This isn’t an exact science, and just like making mashed potatoes, you have some leeway. Simply taste your potatoes to ensure they taste good, and add milk gradually to ensure your filling is firm enough to pipe into the shells, and you’ll be fine.
…and if you end up with leftover potato puree, it makes an excellent sidedish for dinner!

**Pecans would be an excellent alternate choice!

Filling:

First, the filling, which is basically mashed sweet potatoes. This can be done in a food processor or a stand mixer (use a stand mixer if you’re doing a larger quantity).

Slice your potatoes into even sized rounds, and boil for about 10 minutes or until you can stab them with a fork with little resistance.
Run them under cold water in a colander, let cool to touch. Remove the skins, they should peel off easily with your fingers.

In a food processor (or mixer) combine the sweet potatoes with the butter, sugar, milk, and vanilla. (1 batch in my food processor was about the right amount for the 50 tarts, but I made extra just in case, and we had the remaining for dinner!). Puree until smooth and thick (See photos).

The neatest method for transferring the filling to the shells is piping it. If you don’t have a piping bag you want to use, just fill a ziptop sandwich bag with your filling, then trim off a corner (trim small at first, you can always make it bigger!).

Line up your shells on a cookie sheet, and squeeze the filling into the waiting pastry shells.

Topping:

Clean out your food processor if necessary, then add your brown sugar, firm butter, and flour. Pulse together until the flour is absorbed and the mixture is looking crumbly.
Add your macadamias and your cranberries, and pulse several more times to break up the macadamias a bit and incorporate them into the mixture.
I put about a half cup of each in at first, then decided I wanted more so I added maybe an additional 1/4 cup or so of each.

Sprinkle the topping on your waiting tartlets. Each tart gets about a teaspoon of topping — but don’t measure.

Tarts can be prepared and refrigerated ahead of time (even frozen), so the night of the party, just pop the tray in the oven at about 375 degrees until the toppings brown and caramelize… about 10 minutes should do it. Keep an eye on it, you don’t want the nuts to burn or the shells to get over done. Mine got left in a little long due to a timer setting error, but they still came out ok.

Can be served warm or room temp.

That’s about it!
———————————-

Added Bonus!

As I mentioned, I had leftover potatoes, since I wasn’t sure exactly how much filling I would need and had wanted to be sure I had enough!
Needless to say, that did not go to waste.

I spooned the left over sweet potato mixture into a baking dish.
The topping recipe outlined above was about the right amount for 50 tarts, but I wanted topping on this, so I mixed up a little more (that was pretty heavy on the nuts and fruit).
Sprinkled the topping on, and baked (375 I think?) it for about 15 minutes, or until the topping was crunchy and tan. Just check to see that it is hot all the way through, and you have a perfect sidedish!

• Gorgeous Lemon Meringue Cupcakes from Omnomicon
• Meyer Lemon and Fresh Cranberry Scones from Smitten Kitchen
• The Pioneer Woman cooks a lovely Baked Lemon Pasta
• Smitten Kitchen’s Mint/Lemon Granitas
• Mmmm Panna Cotta… Lemon-Blueberry!
• Megacrafty’s Blackberry Lemon Muffins
• How to preserve lemons from Sunday Suppers
• Baking Bites’ Lemon Poppyseed Cookies
• Lemon Bars
• Lemon Cupcakes Filled with Lemon Curd
• Lemon Drop Cookies from Oh Fransson
• Picky Cook’s lemon curd desserts
• The Perfect Cosmo
• whole lemon tart

• lemon meringue cake
• Foolproof Lemon Tart

And of course, a few more from Dabbled:

• How to Make Candied Lemon Peel
• Tutorial: Make a Lemon Pie, or 2!

Got more?  Leave a link in the comments!

Dot’s Mom’s Blueberry Pie:

Ingredients
Pastry for top & bottom of 9 in pie *
4 c fresh or frozen blueberries (I used frozen ones from my parents haul this summer)
3/4 c sugar
3 Tbs flour
1/2 tsp grated lemon rind (doh! no fresh lemons on hand today, so I left out)
dash salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1-2 tsp lemon juice
1 Tbs butter
*Although it’s certainly not that hard to make your own piecrust pastry, I cheated here and used the all-ready type rolled pastry you can find in the refrigerated section of your grocery store, near the cookie dough rolls and biscuit dough tubes.

(row 1)Combine sugar,flour, spices and peel in a large bowl
Toss with blueberries
Line 9″ pie pan with pastry.
Pour blueberry mixture into shell
(row 2)Sprinkle with Lemon Juice, Dot with butter.
Top with top crust**
Crimp crust edges together, squeezing with your fingers.
(row 3)To avoid too brown crust edges, use aluminum foil to make little strips to cover the edges of the pie. (Unless you have a pie crust shield like this or this)
Sprinkle with xtra sugar and cinnamon.
(row 4)Bake 375 for 35-40 minutes (reduce heat if needed to keep crust from over browning)
Pie is done with nicely tan on top, and blueberry juice is oozing through the holes in the top. Mine took about 15 min longer than the recommendation above.

**For my top crust I used a handy cheat – a Lattice Pie Top Cutter –basically a giant cookie cutter that gives the appearance of a lattice crust. You can do anything you want here (if you use a solid sheet, be sure to prick the top of the pie), including making a ‘real’ lattice top, or using cookie cutters to cut out shapes.

If you click through to flickr, the picture above contains notes explaining all the steps – a one stop recipe!

Several people asked where to get the lattice top maker: You can get a Fox Run Lattice Pie Top Cutter HERE!

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This is a favorite lemon pie of mine… It’s dense, rich and very lemon-y. Lemon Chess, closer to lemon bars than lemon meringue. These make a lovely hostess gift (bake the pie in a pretty pie plate for your recipient to keep)… or make your own ‘gift set’ with lemons, the recipe, and some gear to make it (recommendations below).
(UPDATE: Get the recipe as a PDF here)

1. How to Make a Lemon Pie: Ingredients (2 pies), 2. Zesting Lemon*, 3. Lemon Pie: Ingredient Prepwork, 4. Juicing Lemons**, 5. Whisk Melted Butter, Sugar, 6. Add Eggs, 7. Whisk well to combine… ready for pie shells!, 8. Place crust pastry in 2 pie plates***, 9. Crimp Edges, 10. Continue around Pan, crimping edges, 11. Split into the 2 pie shells., 12. Lemon Pie, all done.

Gear Recommendations:
*Nothing zests a lemon quicker or better than a Microplane. I love mine.
**The nifty little juicer I have is convenient- It has a measurements in the cup so you can see how much you have, and it has other attachments, like the egg separator I used in the Eggnog recipe.
***I love my Pyrex pie plates. They cook evenly and seem to do much better than metal.

Recipe:

(Can double and make 2 pies—freeze one*)
1 ½ lemons (3/8 cup lemon juice)
1 ½ cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
3 eggs
dash salt
unbaked pastry shell, 9”

Place pastry in pie pan and crimp edges. (If you’re using storebought pie dough, let it get to room temperature first for ease of unrolling)
Have lemon at room temperature or soak in warm water (to get more juice).
Zest rind (note, you just want the yellow on top, not the white pith, so zest shallowly).
Ream out or squeeze lemon , measure juice.
Add sugar, melted butter, eggs, salt. Mix with wire whip until smooth. Mix in grated rind or just put it in the pie shell. Pour rest over.
(For making 2 pies, I used a measuring cup to alternate scoops into each pie shell)
Bake at 325 about 45 minutes.
Makes one large pie.

*If you want to freeze a pie, just bake the pie, then cool it. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap, cover with foil, label, and freeze. Thaw in the refrigerator before serving.

For extra prettiness and festive holiday cheer: Cut a snowflake out of tissue paper slightly smaller than the top of the pie (or use a paper doily). Place on top of the pie and sift/shake powdered sugar on top. Remove paper, and you have a pretty wintery design! NOTE: Do this right before giving/presenting/serving, so the powdered sugar doesn’t sink in and disappear.

Pastry: For this, I cheated and used prepackaged all ready pie crust from the refrigerated section. But making your own isn’t hard, here’s the recipe:

Oil Pastry:
Quick, easy, & healthier

2 cups sifted all purpose flour
1 ½ tsp salt
½ cup corn, canola, or light olive oil
¼ cup cold milk

Fluff flour & salt together with fork. Pour salad oil and milk into measuring cup (do not stir). Add all at once to flour mixture.
Stir lightly with fork until it forms a ball. Divide into 2 parts.
Flatten one ball slightly. Sprinkle both sides of dough with extra flour. Roll between 2 floured sheets of wax paper. Peel off top sheet and invert over 9” pie pan. Continue according to recipe.
The extra ball can be used for a top crust, to make 2 pies, or frozen for use later.

So, my dear sweet adorable handy hubby requested a pie for his thanksgiving luncheon at work. And after suggesting the many fine pies available at our local Publix, I relented and made one. Don’t be intimidated, this is really as “easy as pie” to do, so put this one in your toolbox for friends & family events coming up. Here’s a recipe and tutorial! (Recipe and instructions below the pic)

Dot’s Mom’s Blueberry Pie:

Ingredients
Pastry for top & bottom of 9 in pie *
4 c fresh or frozen blueberries (I used frozen ones from my parents haul this summer)
3/4 c sugar
3 Tbs flour
1/2 tsp grated lemon rind (doh! no fresh lemons on hand today, so I left out)
dash salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1-2 tsp lemon juice
1 Tbs butter
*Although it’s certainly not that hard to make your own piecrust pastry, I cheated here and used the all-ready type rolled pastry you can find in the refrigerated section of your grocery store, near the cookie dough rolls and biscuit dough tubes.

(row 1)Combine sugar,flour, spices and peel in a large bowl
Toss with blueberries
Line 9″ pie pan with pastry.
Pour blueberry mixture into shell
(row 2)Sprinkle with Lemon Juice, Dot with butter.
Top with top crust**
Crimp crust edges together, squeezing with your fingers.
(row 3)To avoid too brown crust edges, use aluminum foil to make little strips to cover the edges of the pie. (Unless you have a pie crust shield like this or this)
Sprinkle with xtra sugar and cinnamon.
(row 4)Bake 375 for 35-40 minutes (reduce heat if needed to keep crust from over browning)
Pie is done with nicely tan on top, and blueberry juice is oozing through the holes in the top. Mine took about 15 min longer than the recommendation above.

**For my top crust I used a handy cheat – basically a giant cookie cutter that gives the appearance of a lattice crust. You can do anything you want here (if you use a solid sheet, be sure to prick the top of the pie), including making a ‘real’ lattice top, or using cookie cutters to cut out shapes.

If you click through to flickr, the picture above contains notes explaining all the steps – a one stop recipe!

EDIT: You can get a Fox Run Lattice Pie Top Cutter HERE!

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