Late last year, I conducted a little experiment--I had quite a lot of Cranberry-Orange sauce left over from the US Thanksgiving holiday that I didn't really know what to do with, so I decided to try making them into pie tarts. I just threw together a basic shortflake dough, rolled it out, and cut in into rounds with a biscuit cutter. On one circle, I put a bit of cranberry sauce in the middle, placed another circle on top of that, crimped, trimmed, vented, and baked at 375 F for ~30 minutes. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but they were very well received, which encouraged me to branch out and try the same basic technique with different fruit and nut fillings.
As time went on, however, I began to run into some recurring problems. With both an apple and a strawberry-rhubarb pie filling, (which were homemade and thickened with cornstarch according to their respective recipes) I noticed that the consistency was a bit too liquidy, for lack of a better term. As a result, the tarts tended to get soggy a day or so after baking. To try and fix this, I decided to both strain the fruit fillings beforehand to drain any excess liquid, and to roll the pastry rounds a bit thicker than I had before.
Presentation-wise, this worked really well, as with the thicker crust, they puffed up more, and the layers of pastry were very visible, which made them look a lot more "high-end." On the flip side, however, I was dismayed to find that the bottom crusts, in particular, often didn't bake all the way through after 25-30 minutes at 375 F. So now it's like I'm back to square one...
I'm mainly wondering if anyone here has run into any problems like these before, and if there were any suggestions and/or solutions you could offer me. For what it's worth, the fillings all are pre-cooked ahead of time, so I only need them to heat up, not actually cooked inside the pastry. I don't know if increasing the oven temperature and cooking them for a shorter time (ala the technique for buttermilk biscuits) would help cook the pastry all the way through. Or if there is perhaps an ideal thickness for rolling out the pastry crust in this case. Thank you in advance for any help!
As time went on, however, I began to run into some recurring problems. With both an apple and a strawberry-rhubarb pie filling, (which were homemade and thickened with cornstarch according to their respective recipes) I noticed that the consistency was a bit too liquidy, for lack of a better term. As a result, the tarts tended to get soggy a day or so after baking. To try and fix this, I decided to both strain the fruit fillings beforehand to drain any excess liquid, and to roll the pastry rounds a bit thicker than I had before.
Presentation-wise, this worked really well, as with the thicker crust, they puffed up more, and the layers of pastry were very visible, which made them look a lot more "high-end." On the flip side, however, I was dismayed to find that the bottom crusts, in particular, often didn't bake all the way through after 25-30 minutes at 375 F. So now it's like I'm back to square one...
I'm mainly wondering if anyone here has run into any problems like these before, and if there were any suggestions and/or solutions you could offer me. For what it's worth, the fillings all are pre-cooked ahead of time, so I only need them to heat up, not actually cooked inside the pastry. I don't know if increasing the oven temperature and cooking them for a shorter time (ala the technique for buttermilk biscuits) would help cook the pastry all the way through. Or if there is perhaps an ideal thickness for rolling out the pastry crust in this case. Thank you in advance for any help!
