Mini Tart Cherry Pies in Silicone Muffin Cups
By hazelbrown
Cooking With Delightfully Tart Sour Cherries
I am from the Northeast, so the only fruits I have ever picked from trees are apples. The apples here in Colorado can't hold a candle to those in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, though! Blackberry bushes are chock full of berries in Maine this time of year, and I have definitely picked my fair share of those. Oh yes, and then there's the time I signed up to be a blueberry raker for the summer and lasted two days...
A friend from work has five sour cherry trees in his yard, and invited me and my friends to pick as many as we could carry. We said YES PLEASE! and picked huge bagfuls of the perfectly round, translucent cherries. I have never baked with cherries before, so I thought I would just cook them up in a cranberry-sauce type way and eat them like that, but then the silicone muffin cups I ordered from Amazon came in the mail! Ever since going gluten-free, I haven't been too confident with making pie crusts, but I gave it a shot for these mini sour cherry tarts. Full disclosure: I used a pre-made GF baking mix for the crust. They came out wonderfully!
 | Amazon Price: $9.95 List Price: $9.99 |
 | Amazon Price: $5.91 List Price: $9.99 |
A Bad Baker's Recipe for Sour Cherry Filling and Crusts
To make these mini tarts, I started by washing the cherries and pulling off the stems. To pit the cherries, I just gave them a squeeze! Sour cherries have very thin skin, so the pit pops right out.
To make the cherry filling, I cooked the cherries exactly the way you would make cranberry sauce. The cranberry sauce recipe (from the cranberry bag, of course!) is 1 bag of cranberries, 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar. I guessed I had enough cherries to fill about half of one of those cranberry bags, so I used half a cup of water and half a cup of sugar. Boil the sugar and water together, add cherries, and cook at a gentle boil for about five minutes. Let the mixture cool.
(If you were making a real cherry pie, you would add a little cornstarch to the mixture to make it gel a little better. The filling of mini tarts doesn't have to hold together especially well, so I skipped that part. And I also had no cornstarch, so...)
To make the crusts, use your favorite pie crust recipe. I generally dump about a cup of GF baking mix (you can use regular unbleached flour here) in to a mixing bowl, and chop up some cold butter into tiny squares. You can use as much or as little butter as you like, but in general, the more the better! At least taste-wise. You don't think about calories when baking pie, that's Rule #1! For one cup of flour, I use about 4 tablespoons of cold butter. Once you incorporate the butter into the flour, slowly dribble cold water into the mix until it is the right consistency - it should hold together well enough to gently roll, but not be completely waterlogged and sticky.
Once your pie dough is to your liking, roll a small ball of dough between your palms until it forms a small circle. Gently press the dough into the silicone baking cup. Repeat until you use up all your dough. I baked the empty crusts for 10 minutes, took them out of the oven and filled them each with a spoonful of sour cherry filling, and baked the tarts for 5 or 10 minutes more until they were piping hot.
(Some more full disclosure: I am not very good at baking! The reason for this is I never measure anything. This is fine for regular cooking, but not for baking! Even though I know this for a fact, I am still too lazy to measure. These tarts, however, are so easy that even if you don't measure anything they will still come out beautifully!)
How To Eat Sour Cherry Tarts (Answer: Before Your Husband Gets Them All!)
These little tarts are perfectly delicious on their own, but they would also be absolutely fabulous along with some vanilla ice cream. I'm particularly excited to make these little tarts (with other fruits too - apple, strawberry, peach... the opportunities are endless!) for bento boxes. I bought the silicone muffin cups to use in making bento lunches, not actually for baking, but lo and behold! A bento with a sour cherry mini tart in it would be a million times better than a bento without one, don't you think?
Comments
Thanks for the comment!
This is a great and useful hub and it looks tasty that I have to try this one. Bookmark. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Thelma! If you can't find tart cherries, any fruit will do. Instead of cooking it first with water and sugar, you could probably just mix a little sugar and fruit together and pop that in the pie crust. Yum!
Hi hazel, I have never used sour cherries before so I am looking forward to trying these, with ice cream sounds gorgeous, thank you.
These are so cute, and they look delicious! Great Hub!
Thanks Simone! I'm looking forward to making these with apples in the fall!
Its really amazing and looks very yummy.
These really look scrumptious. I love those little desserts and the cherries make it happen. Woo Woo!
I have never used the silicone baking cups..looks simple enough. I am always interested in good gluten free for my friend who has celiac. My daughter and I are bakers and we are always looking our for something yummy for my friend. Thanks for this hub!!
Mmm... those look yummy! Thanks for sharing, voted Up, Useful, Awesome, Beautiful, and Interesting :) Congratulations on being picked as the "Hub of the Day" :)
Congratulations on being the Hub of the day! This recipe looks easy but delicious, two things I love when baking! Using silicone cups is a great idea, especially for individual size desserts.
Thanks for sharing - Voted up.
Congrats for being hub of the day, and those look delicious!
Congrats on hub of the day! These are so pretty--what brand of GF dough mix did you use?
This would be a perfect sized little dessert. Will have to check out those silicone muffin cups! Thanks for the inspiration and congratulations on being a featured hub of the day.
This Hub of the day is making me hungry every time I check out my Home! I love the fact that the recipe is so simple and that the result looks great :) Quite a yummy dessert that deserved to be featured as the Hub of the day. Congrats!
congrats on hub of the day, you deserve it, I am not a baker, but reading this I just might give it a try
Very useful hub!
Thanks and great job winning hub of the day!
Congratulations on your hub being chosen hub of the day. These sound tasty.
Looks very yummy!
Congratulations on being selected for the Hub of the Day!
I like your long-tail of search title! That should do well in the search engines! These recipes sound good! Voting Up and all that, as well as sharing! Nice job.
JSMatthew~
Mmmmm..im going through a cherry phase so this hub hits the spot!
Thank you, everyone! I'm honored to be the hub of the day. RTalloni, I used a Bob's Red Mill GF all purpose baking mix. You can make your own mix, but so far I haven't made a mix that's as good as the pre-made kind. I hope you get a chance to try these little guys!
they look so delicious, I wish I could make out such awesome dessert, too! thanks for sharing this with us!
Looks very yummy, I'm sure they taste just as good! Thanks for sharing.
The mini tarts look so colorful and delicious and really show off those new silicone muffin cups. Welcome to Hub Pages and congratulations on making Hub of the Day. Voted up across the board except for funny.
I voted this one up when I first read it, but just want to say congratulations on being Hub of the Day! Excellent work!
I usually try to eat as much GF foods as I can. It looks so good I can't wait to make it. It's good to try new things.
Hi Hazel, I thought your hub was excellent the first time I read it, I just want to add congratulations on being Hub of the Day! well done.
Yum, yum, yum, these look so delicious. I grew up in the northeast too and remember picking grocery bag fulls of blueberries. When we got home I would have to pick the stems off each blueberry. It was awful. Looking back I don't know why we didn't do that as we picked them. Anyway, the sour cherries sound delicious! Congrats on hub of the day! You definitely get my vote for awesome and beautiful. I think there should be a delicious button too.
Your recipe makes my face smile and my stomach growl.
Thanks so much, everybody! ktrapp, the blueberry stems are the worst! You were probably trying to pick quickly to get out of the sun or run away from mosquitos!! ;)
brsmom68 10 months ago
The tarts look very good! It is difficult to find good recipes for GF desserts; my Mom suffers from Celiac Disease and it is nice to find recipes which can be made for her. Thank you! Bookmarked and voted up!