I grew up eating these as cheesecakes, when I moved to London and ordered a cheesecake, this is what I expected. It turned up raw and I sent it back to be cooked and made a right fool of myself. I still think that raw cheesecakes are uncooked and these are proper ones, they are delicious.
Ingredients: for 8 tarts – depending on the size of your tart tins
Pastry: 200g plain flour
50g lard
50g butter
pinch of saltApprox 30ml cold water to mix
Filling: 300g tub quark, curd or cottage cheese (low fat is fine)
50g sugar
50g currants
1 egg
40g butter, melted
¼ teaspoon cinnamon and nutmeg
Grated zest of an orange
How to make Yorkshire Cheesecakes …. WASH YOUR HANDS
- Preheat the oven to 200c/Gas 6/AGA roasting oven.
- Rub the lard and butter together into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, add the salt.
- Add the water a little at a time and use the knife to ‘cut’ and stir into the dry mixture, keep adding the water until the mixture forms a stiff dough.
- Dust a clean, flat work surface with flour and roll out the pastry to approximately 5mm thick. Grease the tartlet tins with a little butter.
- Place the tartlet tins onto the pastry and using the round bladed knife cut out a circle shape approx 2 cm larger than the outside of the tin. Repeat for all the tins. Line the tins with the pastry, pressing the pastry gently into the tin.
- Mix the filling ingredients together into a bowl and share out between the tins, the mixture should come to slightly below the top of each pastry lined tin.
- Transfer the tartlet tins onto a baking tray and and bake for approx 20 minutes until the pastry is golden brown at the edges and the filling is set and light brown in colour.
- Transfer the tartlets to a wire rack until cool enough to eat.