jam filled mini butter tarts

In my other job, I am blessed to have such sweet clients, that not only tip me well, but also leave little food gifts.  It's nice to have foodies as clients.
I know that making jam and jellies is work, a food art I have yet to delve into.
With all the summer produce around making my own spicy bread & butter pickles is something
I would love to try my hand at.
Recently one of my clients gave me some homemade peach jam.
Is there anything better than fresh peach or apricot jam?  Sure, it's raspberry or blueberry.  Ha.
Wanting to use this peach jam on a fresh croissant or toasted english muffin, I opted for using it in cookie form.
A nice slightly salty buttery cookie base filled with a dollop of peach jam.
Mmm. Heavenly.
So this is a "take" on the butter tart on a tad more salty--the yearning for sweet & salty never goes far away from my creativity.
These are good, easy to make too since there is no rolling of the cookie dough, cutting out shapes, etc..
Be warned though, they are very addictive because they are so small and bite-size.

I think homemade apricot jam would be so good in these!
Oh and maybe beach plum jelly?


If the dough gets too soft after placing in tins, put it back in the fridge for a few minutes to firm up
before baking.

jam filled mini butter tarts

print recipe

2 cups all purpose flour

1 ts baking powder

½ TB sea salt

2/3 cup white sugar

16 TB butter, room temp

8 oz. cream cheese, room temp

1 and ¼ ts pure vanilla extract

fruit filling:

use jam of your choice (peach, raspberry, apricot, etc…)

Cook Notes:  I used mini muffin tins and got about 42-48 cookies.  If you don’t want to do muffin tins then you could do them as flat cookies making sure to make indentations in the middle of the raw cookie to place the jam.

Keep in mind you want to keep the dough fairly cold. So if after placing dough into tins, you might want to pop it back in the fridge to firm up again; We want these to bake up fairly crisp around the edges.

In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt. 

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla together until well mixed. Add in half the dry mixture to the wet and mix, then add in the other half and mix again until all combined.  Put dough in plastic wrap, cover up well and let sit in fridge at least 6 hours or overnight.  I kept mine in for 3 days and it was fine.

Using a mini muffin tin, spray with non-stick cooking spray.  Then scoop out a dough ball about 2 inches thick/round, press into muffin tin, making sure to get the edges good.  Then using your thumb, gently make a well in the middle to place a dollup of jam.  Make sure you don’t leave any open spaces at the bottom or jam will leak out.

Using a small spoon, fill the centers with about a teaspoon or of jam.

Try not to overfill with jam.

If y our kitchen runs hot or it’s the middle of summer, pop these back in the fridge for a few minutes to chill up.  We want these to bake up fairly crisp around the edges.

Bake 18-23 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.

I let these cool (about 2 hours) in the muffin tins until they set up enough to be removed.

They will be very soft when they come out of the oven, so don’t try and remove them.

Using the mini muffin tins I got about 42-48 tarts.