Viennese Tartlets - Unlive by Lindsey

These are very short little cakes with a nice crumbly texture.

Method

First of all, beat the butter and the icing sugar together until very soft and creamy and afterwards, stir in the sieved flour and cornflour to form a soft paste. Now sit the piping bag in an empty jug – nozzle end down – and fold the ends of the piping bag all round the edge of the jug. This leaves you with two hands free to transfer the paste to the piping bag.

When it's all in, squeeze the paste down the bag to the nozzle and pipe the mixture into the paper cases in a circulate pattern to give a hollow in the centre – you'll need to scrape the paste down the bag once or twice during piping, and to do this simply lay the bag down flat on the work surface and use a stiff plastic spatula or palette knife to push the mixture inside towards the nozzle end. Then carry on piping.

Bake the cakes for 20 minutes or until lightly golden brown, they will still be just slightly soft in the centre so don't worry about that. Remove them from the patty tins to a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes, leaving them in their paper cases. Now put a small blob (about half a teaspoonful) of raspberry jam in the centre of each tartlet, then sift a light dusting of icing sugar over the top of each one and leave them to cool. It doesn't matter if the icing sugar obscures the jam – it will soon be absorbed by the jam so you'll end up with delicious little red blobs in the centre. Store the tartlets in an airtight tin.