Stone Fruit Tartlets with Rough Puff Pastry

The WWOOFers manhandled these tartlets. The three of them showed up on a Monday, fell in love with each other, and then, under feigned personal duress and believable tremendous confusion, ditched the farm that Wednesday morning to pursue their triad; somewhere along the line they pounded back all of the desserts, drank a lot of Twisted Tea, and left skivvies tacked to a chair in the basement. “You know, when I grow up,” mused the 23-year-old, “what I really want to do is become a foodie. I think I’d like that.” Arlene and I snorted into our beers, and we would have dumped them on his head had we known that later that night he would announce with deep solemnity that the three of the them were forgoing the endless opportunity to learn to make incredible food so they could get it on somewhere else. 

While we all worked on cheese and goats, the three of them horsed around in the shower and waxed poetic about what it’s like to “work hard” and be away from home. And even though they thus annoyed me to hell and the shared farm attitude was “fuck ‘em,” in a backwards way I almost appreciate their inanity because it brought levity to the farm once they were gone—a fun story to tell my folks about the spoiled Oberlin kids gone awry. Plus, they were totally nuts about these tartlets, if that’s any kind of endorsement. Don’t have any stone fruit? Use apple slices! Or pears. Or pralines. Don’t have any sluggish WOOFers with whom to share them? Toast to your lucky stars.

Stone Fruit Tartlets

Yields about 12 to 15 tartlets, depending on size

Adapted from Apt. 2B Baking Co. and Not Without Salt

This was my first time making rough puff pastry, and while you can see that I overbaked it some and my fruit pieces were a wee wack, I am in love with this recipe. I am also in love with Yossy of Apt. 2B Baking Co. for always having the most easily beautiful photos and recipes to share. Not so much in love that I’d ditch my farm to run away together, but enough so that her blog inspires me every day. Read it!

For Rough Puff Pastry
Below is one-half of a full recipe, which is just what you'll need to make about one dozen to 15 tartlets. See full proportions and a photo tutorial here if you'd like.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
3 1/4 sticks (26 tablespoons) unsalted, very cold butter, cut into half-inch cubes
1/2 cup very cold water

1.  Sift together dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Add butter chunks, and mix on the lowest speed for 30 seconds. Drizzle the water over the top and mix on the lowest speed for 15 seconds. (You can also do this whole step by hand using a bench scraper, if you'd rather.)

2.  Dump flour mixture onto clean counter or pastry board. Using your hands and a bench scraper, push the crumbly mass into a long rectangle, with the long end parallel to your body. Using the bench scraper, fold the right third of the dough over into the center and then the left third of the dough into the center on top; it's like folding a business letter. Rotate the dough 90 degrees.

3.  Reshape and push the dough into a rectangle again. Repeat the folding and turning two more times for a total of three times folded. If the dough becomes soft, just refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes and continue. Once you've completed your turns, wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.

4.  Remove dough from fridge and repeat process with three more turns. Where in the previous round your were mostly using your hands to push and shape the dough, a well-floured rolling pin will the do the trick now that the dough is more pliable. After the three turns (for a grand total of six), let dough rest, wrapped in fridge for 30 minutes; your dough is now ready to use! When baking, remember to preheat the oven for about an hour ahead of time, if you can.

For Assembly and Baking
As Yossy warns, these bake best in a very hot oven and when the pastry is very cold, almost frozen. My second batch puffed much more nicely than my first, so be sure to pre-heat your oven for a good while, and don't skimp on the freezer time for the pastry squares.

Rough puff pastry (see above)
5 to 7 pieces of stone fruit (one nectarine or peach will yield three tartlets if you slice well; one small plum or apricot will yield two)
1 egg + 1 tablespoon water, beaten with a fork until no streaks remain
1 teaspoon raw or large-grain sugar per tartlet
Powdered sugar for dusting, if desired

1. At least an hour prior to baking, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment. When ready to bake, on a lightly floured surface, roll out rough puff pasty to a quarter-inch thick, keeping it as close to a rectangle as you can. With a knife or bench scraper, cut pastry into squares, three or four inches on each side (plums fit well on three-inch squares, but I wish I'd gone bigger for nectarines). Move squares to cookie sheets, and chill in the freezer for 20 to 30 minutes.

2.  Meanwhile, halve and pit your stone fruit. Cut the halves into eighth-inch slices, keeping them together so that they're easy to fan out across the pastry. When the pastry is very cold, brush the tops with your egg wash. Arrange tartlets on sheets with an inch or so of space between. Sprinkle each square with about half a teaspoon of sugar, fan the fruit across, and top with the rest of the sugar so that each tartlet has about one teaspoon total. Brush the excess sugar from the pans so that it doesn't blacken in the oven (like mine did), and bake your tartlets for 15 to 20 minutes, until they're lightly golden (I went a little long on the ones pictured). Allow to cool for about ten minutes, and enjoy! They'll keep covered at room temperature for about three days, softening a little bit each day.

Lemon Verbena Meringue Tartlets

My cousin Ethan is getting married on a summer camp outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania tomorrow. Ethan and I, and all the cousins, spent many magical summers together as kids thanks to my parents' house in Maine and the proximity of the cousins' former home in Vermont. We spent hours upon hours traipsing through the fishing camp next door (now a town recreation center), raiding the supply shop for candy and making up rude rhymes about the campers, one particularly cruel one which was directed at a guy we nicknamed Rambo and his rabbit, and that ultimately resulted in our grandmother forcing us to go next door with bowed heads and apologize. We honed our acorn whistles, perfected matching bird calls, and practiced shimmying over the dividing fences as we made up enemies and allies in our ongoing imagined battle for control of the lakefront (and candy store). One time Ethan and I were running through the forest, barefoot, and we slipped on a large dead fish with a black worm crawling out of its eaten eyeball. Another time we braved a sloshing lake storm in a rubber raft together with his little sister and my same-age cousin Lydia, all the while screaming made-up sea songs into the wind without any parental supervision. All of the cousins excelled at making up songs, and my aunt's dogs especially were the brunt of many of them. Ethan and I haven't seen each other in about eight years, Lydia maybe five, and Jacob close to a decade.

And so my sister came down to DC last night to drive up to Scranton with me. My parents and both aunts will be there, and Joey is coming too, and we've packed up the cards and Bananagrams in anticipation of a rainy, cabin-spent weekend, punctuated, of course, with long-overdue reunions and a wedding. Certainly there won't be any Rambos or battle cries, but I'm very much looking forward to the inevitable rekindling of cousin spirit that was so prominent in my kid-dom. 

Oh and so these tartlets have nothing to do with any of this, except that I made them last night when I had a spare two hours before my sister and I went out dancing. It's a tart, tart lemon verbena tart (did you read that? very tart), with a marshmallowy billowy topping that I love. I worried that the verbena would get lost in the lemon, and maybe it does just ever so slightly, but I still think I can taste the herbalness and definitely recommend that you try it if you've got verbena on hand. Half as much lemon balm might be nice too, or a few springs of lemon thyme if you're into it. Happy weekend, all!

Lemon Verbena Tartlets

Makes six four-inch tartlets

For tart dough
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan, via Smitten Kitchen
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup powdered sugar
¼ teaspoon fine-grain salt
9 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter
1 large egg

For curd
½ cup granulated sugar
20 lemon verbena leaves, about two inches long each
6 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup cold water
½ cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3 egg yolks, whisked (save the whites!)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1½ cups boiling water
2 teaspoon fresh lemon zest

For meringue
4 large egg whites
1 cup white sugar, pref. very fine

1. Make tart dough:  cube butter into one-inch pieces and chill in freezer while you ready everything else. In the bowl of a food processor, mix flour, sugar, and salt. Sprinkle butter over top, and pulse about 10 to 15 times until butter is between the size of peas and oatmeal. Use a fork to break up egg in a small bowl, and pour a bit at a time through the feed tube, pulsing once after each addition. When the egg is all in, pulse the dough for ten seconds at a time until it comes together. Right before you get to this point, the mixer will change sounds and essentially start grumbling at you. Dump dough onto sheet of plastic wrap, gently knead together, and chill for at least one hour.

2. Divide the dough into six pieces, and roll out one by one into a six-inch circle. Line each of your tartlet pans with the dough, even out the tops, prick crust all over with a fork, and freeze lined pans for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. When tartlet dough has chilled, line each pan with a buttered sheet of foil, sticking it firmly to the bottom and sides to help prevent shrinkage. Place the pans on a cookie sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes until crust is lightly browned. Proceed with curd and meringue.

3.  Make curd:  chop verbena leaves and grind them into the sugar using the back of a wooden spoon or a pestle in a large bowl; this helps release the oils and flavor. Wipe out bowl. Add sugar, leaves, cornstarch, and salt to a heavy two- to three-quart saucepan. Gradually blend in cold water and lemon juice until smooth. Whisk in the three egg yolks until thoroughly combined, then add the butter. Slowly add the boiling water, stirring all the while, then bring mixture to a full boil over medium-low heat, stirring gently. Once curd begins to thicken, reduce heat and simmer for one minute. Remove from heat, strain curd into the bowl you smashed the leaves in, then stir in the zest. Pour filling into baked tart shells, and cover with foil to trap the heat.

4.  Make meringue: preheat oven to broil and place rack in upper third of oven. Place egg whites and sugar in the heatproof bowl of a stand mixer set over, but not touching, simmering water. Cook, whisking, until mixture is warm to the touch, about three to five minutes (will depend on how cold your egg whites were to begin). Transfer mixture to an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, and mix on high until stiff peaks form.

5.  Spoon meringue over the tartlets, anchoring to crust around the edges; swirl it decoratively with the back of a spoon if you want. With tartlets on the cookie sheet still, broil until meringue is golden, about three or four minutes depending on your oven. Rotate the pan halfway through so that thebabes at the back don’t get more color than the ones in the front. Allow tartlets to set for about an hour, then pop in the fridge to cool and/or store. They will keep for two to three days in the fridge!

Maple Pecan Tartlets (And When Things Could Go Better)

Hazelnut cardamom "tartlets"

I have a hard time screwing up. Sometimes I cry, often I break things, and if I'm not snappy then I'm hysterical. Shown are some hazelnut, cardamom, honey tartlets that I absolutely effed up three times in a row (in the same night!). Not shown is my poor little dented tartlet pan bottom that I banged repeatedly and frustratedly with a fork while trying to dislodge a stuck, curdled tart. The truth behind my kitchen is that I'm thrilled with about 80% of what I bake and totally mortified by the rest of it, and usually I only blog about what turned out awesome. I've done a lot of bake sales and events in DC since participating in that first bake sale way back when, and I've always been proud of my contributions. This makes me pretty lucky as far as sharing what I love goes, but I have yet to learn how to troubleshoot or recover when things go disastrously. If there was any day to know how to screw up gracefully, it would have been last Saturday.

Maple pecan tartlets. Say it proud!

Before the Punk Rock Flea Market, my pumpkin whoopie pies fell flat, I broke my favorite dish, broke my oven thermometer, broke the sink, and I'm pretty sure that our new oven is out of whack, so maybe I broke that too. I burned cookies, underbaked cookies, over-diluted icing, ran out of butter, lost a tartlet pan bottom, dropped stuff on the floor, and didn't bake my maple pecan tartlets with enough time to allow them to set. Panicked, I called my sister who counseled me to save what I could and walk away from the rest; "remove the stress," she said. And I did! And she was right! In the end, I donated four potato-gruyere tartlets and two dozen cookies (less than half of what I had planned to sell) with moderate success, and Joey and I spent a killer day thrifting and eating food made by others. I learned that if I must mess up, then I shouldn't agonize over it or smash my tartlet pans with a fork. I'll save what I can and walk away from the rest and hey, who knows, maybe by the time I get back, my maple pecan tarts will be set and they will taste so dang good that any anguish will have almost been worth it. Plus, I'll relearn for the umpteenth time that rushing through the kitchen is no way to bake; lesson learned (again).

Maple Pecan Tartlets

Adapted from Gourmet

Makes six tartlets, but could be adapted for one nine-inch tart.

These would be super for Thanksgiving. I love maple with most of my soul, and it's great and gooey with the pecans. The original recipe calls for maple sugar, but since it's so pricey and there's already maple syrup in the tartlets, I opted for tubrinando sugar. I don't think these needed any help in the maple department, but if you've got maple sugar lying around (you luxurious animal!), you might try it.

For the tartlet shells

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick plus 1 tablespoon very cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1.  In the bowl of a food processor, add flour, sugar, and salt, pulse once to blend. Sprinkle the cold butter across the top and pulse several times until mixture has some pea-sized lumps of butter and some oatmeal flake-sized lumps of butter. Do not overmix. Add the egg a little bit at a time, pulsing after each addition. Once it's all in, process in long pulses--about ten seconds each--until mixture comes together in clumps. Shortly before this stage, the processor will make a different, deeper sound; that's how you know the dough is about to be ready.

2.  Dump the contents of the processor onto a lightly floured surface, and using your hands, gently incorporate any ingredients that didn't get mixed in. Flatten dough into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate until firm, about two hours.  After the dough has chilled, divide into six equal rounds. Roll out each round to a five-inch diameter and gently line your tartlet shells with the rounds. Either trim the overhang or tuck it down for a double wall of crust (what I do). Pop them into the freezer for 30 minutes to chill thoroughly (this helps prevent the crusts from shrinking).

For the filling

2 large eggs

1/2 cup Grade B maple syrup (the good shtuff)

6 tablespoons light brown sugar, packed

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

3 tablespoons maple sugar (I used turbinando)

1 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Rounded 1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup pecans, 2/3 cup finely chopped and 1/3 cup coarsely chopped

1.  Preheat oven to 370 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with foil, and line each of the frozen crusts of the tartlets with a square of lightly buttered foil, shiny side down. Bake the tartlet shells for ten minutes. Remove the foil and bake for an additional seven to ten minutes, or until the edges are slightly gold.  Remove and let cool (in pans) for about 15 minutes.

2.  Increase the temperature to 375 degrees. As crusts are cooling, whisk the eggs, syrup, sugars, vinegar, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Make sure that everything is evenly mixed.  Put the tartlet crusts on the cookie sheet, and evenly distribute the finely chopped pecans to each of the shells. Then evenly distribute the filling among the shells, and top with the remaining large pieces of pecans. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes until filling is just set. Remove and cool on racks for at least 15 minutes and up to 30, until filling has firmed somewhat. Serve warm or at room temperature, possibly with bourbon whipped cream.

Gingersnap Mascarpone Nectarine Tartlets

As opposed to the sexy close-up, how about a demure far-away shot?

My first bag of the season of farmers market nectarines went bad after suffering for only a moment in this relentless city heat. I arrived home Sunday morning to find my tartlet plans thwarted by enormous angry flies and weepy, mangled fruit. My experience with DC produce has generally been depressing or gross, but in the still heat of a deadly weekend full of nectarine and peach casualties, I committed to transcending my own produce expectations so that I could finally and convincingly claim to friends in California that, “Christ no, I don’t miss the produce at all! Gosh, not even kind of!”

Lo and behold! As if the city knew I was about to shrug off my tenuous food allegiance, it bestowed five excellent, if bruised, nectarines upon me, and I made one of my favorite fruity baked goods to date. I might occasionally miss the ease of a California fruit excursion, but damned if I don’t love coaxing this fickle produce mistress that is the east coast into giving me a good piece of fruit every now and then.

Gingersnap Mascarpone Nectarine Tartlets

As Deb from SmittenKitchen suggests, this would be excellent with strawberries, or any kind of stone fruit, or a chocolate-wafer crust. I think you could add maple sugar to the filling and use blueberries with a graham cracker crust too and come up with something pretty awesome. I also recently saw peanut butter wafers at Whole Foods. I'm just sayin'....

Crust
43 gingersnap cookies, coarsely broken (about 3 1/2 cups of pieces—I used gingersnaps that were about the size of ‘Nilla Wafers)
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Filling
1 8-ounce container mascarpone cheese
6 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon finely chopped crystallized ginger (optional)

Topping
4 to 5 small nectarines, halved, pitted, cut into thin slices
1/4 cup peach jam, warmed
Finely chopped crystallized ginger, or mint leaves for optional garnish (I passed on this)

For crust: Preheat oven to 350°F. Finely grind gingersnaps in food processor. Add melted butter and pulse on and off until crumbs are evenly moistened. Press mixture over bottom and up sides of six 4-inch-diameter tartlet pans with removable bottoms. Bake crust until color darkens, pressing sides with back of spoon if beginning to slide, about eight minutes. Cool completely (I did not cool mine completely by any means, and it was fine).

For filling: Beat first six ingredients in medium bowl until smooth. Beat in crystallized ginger if you’re using it. Spread filling in prepared crust. Cover loosely and refrigerate at least two hours and up to one day.

For topping: Overlap nectarine slices atop filling. Brush with jam. Sprinkle with garnish if you’re using it. Serve, or refrigerate up to six hours.

Vanilla Bean and Whiskey Pudding Tartlets

My sister’s apartment is sort of an apocalyptic mess. She has three rolling pins I can never find, always appears to have some sort of meat carcass in her fridge waiting to be cooked into stock, and on my most recent trip to Pittsburgh, also had an ice formation in her freezer that I think she left there because it looks like, well, a certain male bathing-suit part. Her apartment is scattered with clothes, children’s books, crafting things, leftover art, and library DVDs, and also, she keeps ceramic figurines of ambiguously rendered farm animals in her plants (the donkey-cow-pig, for instance). There are wool sweaters in the freezer too, and the contents of a jumbo box of Nerds spilled across her coffee table.

Oh hai! I'm just a stack of pans, chillin' in the freezer with an icy phallus.

My cataloguing of her domestic detritus might not show it, but my sister is flat out my hero. The Atlantic published an article in May noting that 93% of the happy and healthy adults Dr. George Valliant measured in his lifelong psychological study on happiness had had good relationships with a sibling when younger. Well, from partnering to steal all the neighbors’ sample boxes of cereal, to getting the pride kicked out of me in every single board and card game ever, to catching tadpoles and crawdads in New Hampshire and jumping into slimy lakes and an eel-filled quarry in Maine, we have the kind of relationship reinforced by frozen wool sweaters, moldy dishes, and other things that take the sort of roundabout way to get where they're going. And when not preserving phallic ice sculptures or eating Vietnamese soups full of MSG, sometimes we make things in the kitchen. This time, it was failed butterscotch tartlets that turned into a serendipitous, vanilla-whiskey mistake, which I think sounds just about right, all things considered.

To keep the inside of the freezer warm.

Sometimes Whole Foods just, aherm, gives vanilla beans away.

Vanilla Bean and Whiskey Pudding Tartlets (with Chocolate Espresso Beans)
Adapted clumsily from Baked! New Frontiers in Baking

This recipe was supposed to make butterscotch tartlets, but they came out vanilla-y. I might not have cooked the caramel long enough and that's what did it, but I was using raw sugar, so it looked a little "amber-colored" from the get-go. Whatever I did wrong, these still tasted really excellent, and the whiskey adds a great punch to the vanilla. If you want to limit the butterscotch taste, simply do not caramelize the sugar. You might wonder what the point of going to the hassle of crusts is. I still wonder. In the end, they add some buttery goodness, and butter is nearly always the right decision, so if you can handle the additional steps, I say go for it.

Oat Wheat Tart Crust
1 cup rolled (oops! couldn’t find these, so I used 1 c. wheat flour)
½ cup whole-wheat flour
1cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 ½ sticks (¾ cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
¼ cup milk

1. Normally you would use a food processor to grind up the oats, if you had them, until ground but not powdered. Add the flours, sugar, and salt and pulse until combined. Add the butter and pulse until sandy. Add the milk and pulse a few seconds.

2. Scoop the dough out, form into a large ball, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 and up to 3 hours.

3. Unwrap the dough, put it on a floured work surface, cut into 8 equal pieces. Gently shape each into a smooth disk (dough will be sticky), and then slide onto floured parchment paper and refrigerate for ten minutes (I skipped this). Using a floured rolling pin, roll the disks into a 6-inch, ¼-inch thick rounds, and place gently into tartlet pans, pushing gently against the sides and rolling down or trimming any excess.

4. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F, and put the tartlet crust into the freezer for 30 minutes. Place on a baking sheet and bake, rotating halfway through, for about 15 minutes or until the crusts are golden brown. Transfer to a rack, and let cool while you make the pudding. Remove shells from pans once they are cooled.

“Butterscotch” Pudding
6 large egg yolks
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup water
¼ cup heavy cream
½ cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted (tapioca starch would work a-okay too)
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons whiskey (or you know, more than that)

1. Put egg yolks into heatproof bowl and set aside. In a small saucepan, combine white sugar and water and stir over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved, then increase heat to medium high and cook until mixture turns dark amber. Swirl the pan if necessary to distribute the color evenly, but do not stir. Remove form heat, let stand 1 minute, then stir in the cream. Pour into a small bowl and set aside.

2. In another small saucepan, combine brown sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Stir in milk, and whisk to combine. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise, and scrape out the seeds into the saucepan; toss in the bean husk. Cook over medium-high, whisking occasionally until the mixture comes to a boil. Remove from heat and add the caramel, whisking until combined, then pour one-third of the mixture over the eggs. Keep whisking and add another third, then transfer the egg mixture back to the pan with the milk mixture in the saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high. Boil 2 to 3 minutes.

3. Remove from head and add butter and whiskey. Keep whisking for about a minute to cool then let pudding sit for 15 minutes. Remove vanilla beans. Whisk pudding again until smooth, and divide into shells evenly, saving just a couple tablespoons in a separate bowl. Cover the tarts and bowl with plastic wrap, and chill in fridge for 2 hours. Before serving, whisk the pudding in the bowl, and add a dollop to each tart. Top with some chocolate-covered espresso beans, and you’re all set!

Honey Walnut Tartlets and Radio CPR Sale

I was starting to sound like the biggest, all-time sad bastard a couple of weeks ago. I had contemplated moving back to California, threatened graduate school, and tried to slam the door on DC as I holed up in my house with various failed sewing and photography projects and a couple of completely unhealthy itunes playlists. Well lo’ and behold! All I had to do was look up and suddenly there were (as I had cautiously suspected) quite a few great people doing great things in this city.

I was lucky enough to be included as part of the second annual Radio CPR used books and records sale two weekends ago, along with local artists and craftsters the Bookish Lady, Kristina Bilonik, Kikapika Design, and practically wall-to-wall records and books. My menu was short and sweet: vanilla-caramel-dipped apples, chocolate rads, ginger lemonade, and these honey walnut tartlets that are even easier to make than they are to eat. Radio CPR met some pretty good success with the sale, and I met a couple of folks who sowed some excellent seeds of optimism in my formerly sad-bastard head.

The Tanglewood table! I could include a picture of me actually selling things, but I had gratuitous cleavage in all photos, so we shall leave the abundance of sweet things to stand in for my abundance of chest.

Honey Walnut Tartlets
Adapted from SmittenKitchen via Bon Appétit

If you don't want to make six tartlets, the following proportions will also work just perfectly for one normal 9-inch tart.

1 recipe tart shell, unbaked (I actually don't love this recipe, but it's very, very easy.)
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup golden brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup honey (try to pick a mild one—apple or orange blossom are perfect.)
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon whole aniseed (I skip this and use 1/2 tsp. vanilla instead.)
1 3/4 cups walnuts, toasted, chopped (but not too finely!)
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 370 degrees F. Cut pastry dough into six pieces, and roll out each one to a 6-inch circle. Transfer to a lightly-buttered 4 1/2-inch-diameter tartlet pan with removable bottom. Press crust onto bottom and up sides of pan; trim overhang to 1/2 inch. Fold overhang in and press, forming double-thick sides. Repeat with remaining dough disks and 5 more pans and prick them all over with a fork.

2. Freeze crusts for 30 minutes. Lightly butter six pieces of foil and press them tightly against frozen tart shells. Bake crusts for 10 minutes before taking them out, carefully removing the foil, pressing down any pastry that has bubbled up gently with the back of a spoon and baking them for an additional 7 minutes, or until lightly golden at the edges. Take them out of the oven and let them cool. Increase oven temperature to 400 degrees F.

3. Meanwhile, make the filling. Stir cream and next 5 ingredients in heavy medium saucepan over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves; try not to let liquid splash the sides of the pot. Increase heat; boil until mixture bubbles thickly and color darkens slightly, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in walnuts then salt.

4. Place crusts on baking sheet lined with foil. Divide filling among crusts. Bake tartlets until filling bubbles thickly and crusts are golden, about 25 minutes total. (I actually had a problem with my walnuts and crusts getting close to burning last time I baked this, so I saved my foil pieces this time around, and covered the tops of the tartlets with about 10 minutes left to bake.) Cool tartlets, and remove pan sides while tartlets are still warm.