Recipe for homemade puff pastry tartlets

The store-bought varieties are no match for these homemade puff pastry tartlets for stocking stuffers! They have a wonderful taste, are crunchy and completely light. And not at all boring and semi-dry, as you often experience with store-bought tartlet shells. However, these tartlet shells are not completely homemade, as the puff pastry is store-bought, and that is the only ingredient. 

TIP: Also try other wonderful recipes for grandma's food such as buns in curry, the best broccoli pie and the good one tenderloin casserole with bacon.

Blind baking of puff pastry

To make puff pastry tartlets, you need to blind bake the puff pastry. Blind baking is a technique where a dough is first baked in a mold filled with dried legumes. Their weight keeps the dough in place along the mold so that it does not rise. Dried chickpeas are used here, but all kinds of dried legumes can be used. Once they have been used for blind baking, we would not recommend that you eat the legumes afterwards. But you can easily store them in a bag in the cupboard for the next time you need to blind bake. When the puff pastry has been carefully pressed into the mold, we place baking paper on top before filling it with dried legumes. A good tip is to crumple the baking paper so that it is well wrinkled before you place it over the puff pastry. This way it can fit into the mold more easily. When the puff pastry shells have been blind baked, the legumes and baking paper are removed, and they should be baked until nicely golden before they are ready to serve.   

Filling for homemade tartlet shells

As a filling for the homemade tartlets, we can of course recommend the classic version with chicken and asparagusHere we use chicken breast or the meat from a whole chicken cooked to chicken soup to make the most delicious tartlet filling. However, it can also be delicious to make alternative fillings of fish and shellfish and serve the shells as a nice appetizer. For example, try filling them with salmon mousse, as we do in the recipe these fine filo pastry bowls. You can also use smoked salmon and fresh, crunchy vegetables with pesto, as we do in this recipe for puff pastry nests with salmon.