Summer Bake Series! Roasted Tomato Tarts

There's something really satisfying about simple tarts with few ingredients, especially when you can 'throw' something delicious together for an easy lunch or dinner. There are three base flavour options for these tarts (see below), which makes it super fun.

For this recipe you will need two lined baking trays.

Pre-heat your oven to 180ºC Fan.

For this recipe you have the option of three bases for your pastry:

1. Sweet Chilli Jam

2. Green Pesto

3. Honey Dijon Mustard

Ingredients:

2 Whole Garlic Bulbs (roasted - see below; optional)

1 Tbsp Olive Oil

Packet of Puff Pastry

325g Cherry Tomatoes (halved)

150g Soft Goat's Cheese

1 Egg (beaten)

Basil Leaves

A Jar of your choice of base

How I make my Roasted Tomato Tarts:

1. First decide which base you want to use. I usually use a mustard base but today I went for half of my tarts with the sweet chilli and the other half with pesto. All these bases work well with the tomatoes and goat's cheese.

2. Next, you need to roast your garlic. I had 375g of pastry and roasted two small, whole bulbs. This was more than enough. If you don't like garlic you can leave this out completely. If you do, then first line a small baking tray with foil. Place your garlic bulbs on top of the foil and sprinkle with 1 tbsp of oil and season. Wrap up in the foil and roast in your oven at 180ºC Fan for c.25 minutes. Once cooked, leave to cool before you squeeze the soft garlic out of their skins into a clean bowl.

3. Next, prepare your puff pastry. The best is to unwrap your puff pastry and, with the aid of a small plate or a saucer measuring 14cm in diameter, cut out as many circles of pastry as you can fit. You may need re-roll to get this all to fit but try not to roll the pastry too much. I managed to get 4 14cm round pieces plus 2 5cm round pieces out of my pastry.

4. Place these pastry discs onto two baking trays and lightly score a 1cm border from the outside edge of each pastry disc with a knife. be careful not to cut all the way through the pastry. Then, using a fork, dock each pastry round. Put the trays in the fridge for 10 minutes to chill.

5. While this is happening, if you opted for roasted garlic, now add this to your chosen base and mix really well.

6. It's now time to layer on the goods and bake! Add your preferred base to the pastry. Then add your halved tomatoes, followed by small pieces of the goat's cheese. Make sure to leave that 1cm gap towards the edge clear.

7. Bake for c.20 minutes and until the pastry is golden and the topping starts to brown. If you chose the chilli do watch this as the sweet chilli can burn when exposed to heat.

8. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely before adding some chopped basil. Goes really well with a side salad!