Welsh Cheesecakes

I have many happy memories of visiting my granny's house and always picking something to eat from the vast baked goods supply, whether it was snowballs, shortbread or cheesecakes. Cheesecakes were my favourite but I could never understand why it had that name, due to the clearly evident lack of cheese! After some research, I found out that cheesecake in olde English means tart. Last week I decided to make a batch of these as I had some leftover pastry in the freezer. Unfortunately, I could not find my granny's recipe but I found a similar one on the internet.

Recipe

Yield: 12

Ingredients

• Short crust pastry - see lemon meringue pie

• 100 g self raising flour

• 100 g butter

• 100 g sugar

• 2 eggs

• Jam of your choice

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Make the pastry (look at my lemon meringue pie post to find out how to do this). Cut the pastry into circles and insert them in a muffin tin. Add a blob of jam into each pastry ring and set in the fridge to chill.

To make the sponge, beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Then add in the egg and beat until incorporated. Finally add in the flour and make sure the mixture is lump free.

Spoon in the sponge mixture on top of the pastry and set in the oven to bake for 15-20 mins. They should look golden brown and risen. These tarts are best served hot with vanilla ice cream and custard.