Baked banana tartlets sound like a step into the unknown, but they make perfect sense when you consider how recipes travel around the world, picking up methods and ingredients as they move. Why not pair a traditional pastry with the exotic flavour and sweetness of banana?
Recipes that involve pastry are often perceived as time consuming, but pastry recipes do not require the added step of baking blind unless the filling in a tart is particularly liquid (which causes the pastry to go soggy). If you love making pastry from scratch a great tip is to make double and keep pastry lined tart tins in your freezer. If you do so, tart making becomes extraordinarily easy and these banana tartlets can be knocked up anytime as a last-minute dessert.
You could even make a quick biscuit crumb base instead of making pastry. The best bit is when you finally reach for that jar of raspberry jam in the back of your fridge only to find it is actually leftover cranberry sauce from Christmas. Together, the cranberry sauce and bananas provide a slightly sweet, yet fresh flavour that contrasts so well with the flavour of bitter orange marmalade. Strawberry jam, although much sweeter, also goes very well with bananas and is a good alternative if you don’t have cranberry sauce.
You can easily scale this recipe upwards to make a double quantity, to serve eight. Served hot, topped with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream – mmm... A little grated orange zest over the top of each tartlet once out of the oven adds visual appeal.
Jammy banana tartlets
Ingredients
Serves four
150g plain flour, sifted
75g chilled butter, diced small
1 egg yolk, lightly whisked
For the banana cranberry filling
4tbsp cranberry sauce (or strawberry jam)
2 medium bananas
2tbsp bitter orange marmalade
For the crumble topping
30g butter
2tsp honey
10g dried cranberries or currants (optional)
60g medium porridge oats
30g flaked almonds, roughly chopped
Orange zest, to garnish
To serve
Ice cream
Method
Preheat your oven to 170 degrees fan. You will need four lightly greased 10cm mini tartlet tins.
To make the pastry by hand, put the flour in a mixing bowl. With the tips of your fingers, rub in the butter until all the butter is worked in and it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Use a knife to work in the egg yolk, then bring together to form a dough (add a drop of water if required). Wrap the pastry dough in clingfilm and refrigerate for 20 minutes (to make pastry in a food processor, simply blitz the flour and butter to fine breadcrumbs, then work in egg to form a dough).
Once rested, roll out pastry and use to line four tartlet tins, trim away excess pastry.
For the filling, spread cranberry sauce on the base of each tartlet. Cut the bananas into thin round slices, then lay them (overlapping them slightly) over the cranberry base.
Heat the marmalade in a saucepan and once loosened, brush it over the top of the sliced bananas.
For the crumble topping, in a small saucepan, gently melt the butter, honey and cranberries in a small saucepan. Stir in the oats and flaked almonds until the dry ingredients are fully coated.
Divide the oat topping between the four tartlets, covering the bananas fully.
Before baking, heat a baking sheet in the oven for five minutes, transfer the tartlets on to the hot baking sheet and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 30 minutes until the pastry around the edges is biscuit colour, the top is golden and the cranberry sauce starts to bubble up the sides of the tart (cover if the crumble topping colours too much). Allow to cool slightly before releasing the tartlets from their tins.
Garnish with orange zest and serve hot, with a scoop of ice cream.
Variation
For other fruity fillings, try making this with apples or ripe peaches.
