A tartlet is a small basket of dough stuffed with various salads and all kinds of fillings.

This is not a traditional dish that decorates the festive table. They are usually made for buffets so that guests can have a bite to eat before the main course.

Most often, housewives prepare various snacks as a filling for a tartlet.

Tartlets are a wonderful dish that should be prepared both for a family dinner at home and for an office buffet table.

These little baskets look very charming, so if they are on the table, guests will definitely notice how beautiful and sophisticated it is.

In addition to buffets, baskets with all kinds of fillings are prepared for events such as weddings, birthdays, catering, christenings, and so on.

Cooking sand tartlets at home

You can choose absolutely any filling for tartlets. You don't even have to make the filling, but take ready-made, for example, red caviar.

If you want to fill the baskets with salad, then it is best to cook it yourself, and not buy ready-made one. Fresh tartlets are much tastier.

Talk about how to make your own baskets. It is not at all difficult, therefore, any housewife can make tartlets with their own hands. There would be a desire!

The main action that needs to be done to prepare the baskets is to knead the shortbread dough.

Of course, it is much easier to purchase ready-made baskets in a store or supermarket, but making them yourself is much more interesting.

The shortbread dough from which the baskets are made can also be used to make tartars and pies.

To make tartlets at home, we need ingredients such as:

• half a kilogram of flour,
• one pack of butter (butter, fat),
• a few tablespoons of cold water,
• salt.

As you can see, all products are readily available and not expensive.

So, let's start preparing shortbread dough for tartlets, which should be unsweetened:

1. First, make sure that the flour and butter are not expired. The fresher the food, the tastier the dough will be.
2. Then, sift the flour and add a pinch of salt.
3. Cut the butter into small cubes and put in a separate container.
4. Now you need to make a crumb from flour and butter. To do this, take a few cubes of butter in our hands, sprinkle them with flour and begin to grind. This must be done quite intensively so that the crumb turns out to be small. If the butter melts quickly in your hand, add more flour. Do not hold the oil in your hand, but rather place it on your fingertips. So it will melt more slowly.
5. As soon as all the butter is rubbed with flour, a fatty fine crumb forms. Add cold water to it. Now you can start kneading the dough.
6. You do not need to knead the dough for a long time, otherwise the butter will begin to melt quickly. Make sure that the contact of the dough with the hands is minimal. Stop kneading as soon as you get the type of dough you want. It should make a big ball.
   
7. Then, wrap the dough in foil or plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for half an hour. This must be done so that the butter does not melt, but the dough is infused.
8. After that, you need to prepare the tartlet molds. They need to be washed well before filling with shortcrust pastry, even if they were clean. You don't need to put the dough in the molds if they are wet. Some housewives first grease the molds with butter or sunflower oil, but this does not need to be done, because our dough is already made of butter, so it will not stick to the mold. If the molds are additionally oiled, the basket may turn out to be too greasy and tasteless.
9. We take the dough out of the refrigerator and start filling the molds. In order for the tartlet to "sit" better in it, press down the dough with another shape on top.
   
10. Now take a toothpick and make a few holes on each of the future baskets. You can use a fork instead of a toothpick. This is done so that the filling does not leak out of the tartlet.
    
11. After all the molds are filled, you need to cover the dough with foil. To do this, cut the foil into small pieces and place them on top of each mold.
12. Now you need to pour the load on top so that the basket does not turn out to be too fluffy after baking. Many housewives recommend using beans or peas for these purposes. You need to put quite a lot of beans. This should be done in such a way that the beans completely fill the form, to the very top.
    
13. Before you send the forms to the oven, you need to heat it up to 190-200 degrees.
14. The baskets should be baked for no more than 15 minutes.
    

Once you take out the baskets, remove the foil and beans. We won't need it anymore.

The most important thing is to cool them before filling the sand tartlets. Let them stand at room temperature for 10-15 minutes.

Be sure to delight yourself and your loved ones with this interesting and easy-to-prepare snack