Fruit-filled cheese tarts

Here's my recipe for cheese tarts - well, OK, my whole family calls them "those little pie crust things." These little pastries can be baked right away, or flash-frozen to be popped in the oven another time.

3 oz. cold cream cheese
1 stick cold butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
Your choice jam - I use seedless raspberry or apricot preserves

Chop up the cream cheese and butter, and put it all in a food processor with the cup of flour. Process until it looks like fine crumbs - about the size of corn meal. Dump it into a bowl, squish it all together forming a dough, and shape it into a disk and chill for an hour.

Roll out the dough thinly (you'll need to work in sections, not the whole thing at once) on a floured board or mat, cut dough into 3" circles. In the center of each circle, place a 1/4" tsp of your favorite jam. Wet the edges of the circle, fold the circle in half over the jam, and seal with a fork like you would pie crust. Hence the name, little pie-crust things.

To bake immediately - place the tarts on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until they are slightly browned.

To freeze, place the tarts instead separately on a waxed-paper coated piece of cardboard and flash-freeze. When frozen, place them in a ziplock bag. When ready to bake, place the frozen tarts on an ungreased cookie sheet - and follow the same baking instructions as above - adding another few minutes to the baking time if needed.

Warning - do not keep these in the freezer for too long, or they will taste "sour" - I'm pretty sure that's because of the cream cheese. You should be fine for a few weeks, longer if you experiment with a few.

New Catagory - Do Not Freeze!

On every freezer cooking site there should be a section that serves as a warning - "Do Not Attempt To Freeze!" or something similar. So - I'm adding one. I've tried to freeze lots of strange things, all in the name of saving time and/or money, at times with less than stellar results.

I'm beginning to welcome contributions to all aspects of this site - so please share your successes, and your...um...not-so-successes. :) In today's economy, we can all use a little more time and money, and there simply is no excuse for wasting food if you have even a small freezer with which to work.

I'm also soliciting suggestions regarding what would make this site more user-friendly. What would you like to see here?

Remember my cheesecake experiment?

I posted how I was freezing a piece of homemade cheesecake, and I'd report back later? Guess what? It thawed in the fridge, and was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!! Tasted like I had just made it.

Now, I wouldn't recommend freezing it for any more than a month - but if you're feeling adventurous, you could try. I might next time around and see how long it might actually last.

I only wrapped it in a piece in plastic wrap, nothing fancy, and put it in my freezer that's on top of my fridge. Seriously, it was awesome!!

Finnish Pancake

This is not a freezer recipe - but it's a favorite in our house.

It seems there are dozens of recipes for these baked pancakes out there - and whether they're called "finnish" or "swedish" - they're all basically the same premise - a big puffy oven baked pancake! The ingredients are also very similar, and we tried 5 or 6 different ones before settling on this one, which is our current fav. I found it on Allrecipes.com - here's the direct link to the recipe. Note - I bake this at 425 instead of 450. I found that 450 in my oven browned the top and bottom too much for our taste.

INGREDIENTS
3 eggs
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C)
In a medium bowl stir together sugar, flour, and salt. Add eggs and milk. Beat with an electric mixer until blended. Batter will be very thin. Melt butter in the baking pan. Turn the pan to be sure all of the sides are coated then stir the remaining butter into the batter.
Pour batter into the baking pan and bake for 30 minutes. It will puff up when baking, and flatten when cool. Cut into squares and serve. We serve ours with maple syrup, but you could also serve with jam or fruit.