Nana's Almond Tarts

During our trip to England, one of the highlights for me included my baking lesson with Will's Nana. She makes these delicious and highly addictive almond tarts that I just had to know how to re-create! Since then, Chloe and I have made them in our kitchen and for your pleasure, I will share the recipe.

Step One: Recruit a cute helper to help you measure, dump and stir














Step Two: Make a simple shortbread crust
* 6 ounces of flour
* 3 ounces of vegetable lard or margerine
* water
Mix the flour and marg. together until it looks crumbly. Add water by the tablespoon until it gets to the consistency of dough (or in my amateur case: like play dough)

Step Three: Roll and cut out the dough
* Lightly flour a hard work surface and roll the dough out flat until it is thin (between 1/8" and 1/4")
















* Use a cookie cutter or the top of a glass to make circular shapes
* Gently place the cut-out circles into a muffin tin

Step Four: Make the almond filling
* in a small mixing bowl, stir/whisk/beat with a mixer one egg white until it's stiff with 2 ounces of sugar, 2 ounces of ground almonds and 1 tsp of almond essence.
















Step Five: Fill the tarts
* put about a 1/2tsp of jam (any flavor you want) on top of the tart inside the muffin tin
* put a heaping tsp of the almond mix on the top





















Step Six: Put a thin cross of pastry across the top
















Step Seven: Bake at 350 degrees (or as Nana says, "a moderately hot oven") until set and lightly brown (about 12 minutes)
















Step Eight: Take out and enjoy!!






















Four generation of Yates' can't be wrong: these almond tarts are tasty!!

Cake Pops

Let's talk about those cake pops I made for Annie's birthday party! Yes, they took a while to make, but it was totally worth the effort because they were SO cute!! I received many compliments on the cake pops; the flavor and the aesthetics.

I didn't actually take pictures of the process of making them because it was so messy, but I can tell you how I did it. I got the recipe from a blog called Bakerella (what a great name for a blog, I might add). If you look around her site, you'll see that she's a baking genius and does wildly creative things with cake pops. I, however, just rolled my cake into balls and put them on lollipop sticks that I purchased from Michael's Craft store.

1. bake cake as directed. I bought a strawberry cake mix and followed the mixing and baking directions for a 13 x 9 pan.
2. after the cake cools, crumble in a large bowl. I used my trusty large spatula (from Pampered Chef) - it does every job in my kitchen.
3. mix in a can of frosting. I used pink vanilla frosting - the kind that comes with the sprinkles. In hind sight, I probably shouldn't have used the whole can as the cake pops were really sweet tasting. Next time I'll use a bit less and see how that turns out.
4. roll into balls and place on a baking sheet covered with wax paper.
5. freeze. I froze my cake balls for a couple of hours (RE: did steps 1-4 during nap time and finished my job after the kids went to bed that evening).
6. melt the candy melts (or you can use chocolate chips or almond bark).
7. put the lollipop stick in the cold cake ball and dip in the melted candy.
8. stick the cake pop into a styrofoam block and sprinkle.
9. refridgerate until ready to serve!

This is what the centerpiece looked like:

Let's ask Annie what she thought of the cake pops:

Good to the last lick:

What did Annie's favorite Auntie think to the cake pops?


General Consensus: Cake Pops Rock!!!