Flo's Cheese and Tomato Tarts (Easy)

My Gran used to make these. She made a lot of lovely cakes in her years with the Women's Institute (WI) but these simple tarts were some of my favourites. My Mum recently reminded me of the finer points of the recipe, which is pretty easy.

Ingredients

Shortcrust Pastry - ready rolled out*

Tomatoes - around 4 medium/large

Cheddar Cheese - I used mature

White Pepper - you can also use Black Pepper just my Grandad apparently preferred white

*Apparently Mary Berry is cool with pre-purchase pastry but make your own for bonus points, let's not lose all of our skills!

Equipment

12 cup non-stick muffin tray

Mug or Cup

Bowl

Cooling rack (or shelf from an oven or something)

Method

1. Take the pastry out of the fridge 60 minutes before you start, so that you can unroll it easily.

2. Wash tomatoes and put them in a bowl. Pour boiling water over them and let them sit there for a couple of minutes. Then pick each up with a knife and slide the skin off them (should come off very easily).

3. Unroll the pastry then find a cup or mug that has slightly bigger circumference than the muffin case and use it to cut the pastry into 12 circles. You can use a pastry cutter if you have one!

4. If your muffin tray is non-stick put the circles of pastry into the muffin cases. If you have an older muffin tray you might want to wipe a bit of butter around each case to make them a bit more non-stick first.

5. Slice cheese about 5mm thick and place in the pastry cases. You don't need to be too precise just one or 2 bits of cheese is fine.

6. Slice tomatoes, again about 5mm thick and place these on top of the cheese.

7. Sprinkle on a bit of pepper

8. Bake for around 10 minutes 180C or 160C in a Fan oven or Gas Mark 4

9. Remove from oven and after a couple of minutes ease each tart out onto the cooling rack with a flat knife

Note: In the picture you will see some slightly larger tarts. I had a bit of pastry left over and some bigger tins so I used the spare up in that way. The smaller ones are a bit nicer!