How to make Colm O'Gorman's cracking cranberry and brie tartlets

Bite-sized Brie and Cranberry Tartlets

For this week’s party food recipe, I have paired homemade cranberry sauce with brie to make bite-sized Brie and Cranberry Tartlets. 

I use shop-bought puff pastry for this recipe, after all, who has the time to make puff pastry from scratch, especially at this time of year? 

You will see that I roll and slice the pastry before rolling it into discs that I then use to line mini muffin trays. 

This will make your tartlet bases beautifully delicate and flaky, so it is worth the little bit of effort involved.

I love homemade cranberry sauce. I get ridiculously excited when I see fresh cranberries arrive in the shops at this time of year. 

I am not a fan of the shop-bought cranberry sauce to be honest, as I find it a bit too sweet and lacking in flavour. 

My own recipe sauce has bags and bags of flavour and just the right balance of sweetness and tartness.

I use orange zest and juice in my recipe, along with a little chopped fresh red chilli, and some Cointreau to finish the sauce. 

The chilli adds just a little background heat and makes this sauce a bit special. 

I go through heaps of this every Christmas, and I also make it as gifts for neighbours and friends. 

It is very easy and quick to make, so do give it a try. I promise you will not regret it. 

The recipe below will yield about 350g of cranberry sauce which is plenty to make the tartlets and have enough left over to serve alongside your roast turkey on Christmas Day. 

Store the cranberry sauce in a clean jar in the fridge where it will keep for a few weeks.

Cranberry and Brie Tartlets

recipe by:Colm O'Gorman

You can prepare these tartlets earlier in the day, and then just pop them in the oven to bake when you need them - this recipe will yield 35-40 tartlets.

Preparation Time

 30 mins

Cooking Time

 20 mins

Total Time

 50 mins

Course

 Side

Ingredients

• Cranberry Sauce:

• 1 small shallot

• 1 small red chilli

• 20g butter

• 300g fresh cranberries

• 1 orange

• 50g soft dark brown sugar

• 2 tbsp Cointreau liqueur

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

• Cranberry and Brie Tartlets:

• 1 package of rolled puff pastry

• A little egg wash

• 400g brie cheese

• Homemade cranberry sauce

• A few sprigs of fresh thyme

Method

1. Begin by making the cranberry sauce.

2. Peel and finely chop the shallot. Remove the seeds and stalks from the chilli and dice it very finely. Zest and juice the orange. Rinse the cranberries under some cold running water in a colander.

3. Melt 20g of butter in a medium sized saucepan, and when it starts to foam, add the shallot. Reduce the heat to medium/low. Cook until the shallot has softened, about two minutes. Next add the chopped chilli and cook for one more minute. Add the cranberries, along with the zest and juice of the orange. Add the brown sugar and stir well, then season with no more than half a teaspoon of sea salt and a good grind of black pepper. Bring to a soft boil and add the Cointreau. Stir again and reduce to a simmer. Let the sauce cook gently, stirring occasionally, until the fruit softens and begins to break up and the sauce begins to thicken. This should take about ten to fifteen minutes. Do not overcook. I like my sauce to have some texture with the berries retaining some shape. Taste and add more seasoning if required and set aside when done.

4. Time now to prepare the tartlets. Preheat your oven to 190 Celsius.

5. Open the packet of puff pastry. Inside you will see that the sheet of pastry is rolled up in a sheet of baking paper. Unroll the pastry, removing the paper, and then starting at the longest side, roll the pastry back up again. There is no need to be too heavy handed with this, you just want as tight a roll as possible, but if there is a little gap in the middle, do not worry, it will be fine.

6. Cut half the roll of pastry sideways into thin slices, about 4mm is perfect. You will get about forty pieces from half a roll of pastry. Wrap any left-over pastry up in some baking paper, pop it into a freezer bag and put it in the freezer. You can defrost it and use it when you want to bake again.

7. Lightly flour your worktop and use a rolling pin to roll out each of the slices of pastry into a rough disc just big enough to line one section of a mini-muffin tray. Gently place the pastry into the tray. Repeat until you have used all the discs of pastry and lined every section of your mini-muffin trays. Brush the edges of the pastry with a little egg wash and then add a little of the cranberry sauce to the bottom of each pastry cup, a little less than a teaspoon per tart is plenty.

8. Cut the wedge of brie into 2cm cubes and place a piece of the cheese on top of the cranberry sauce in each tart. Bake for twenty minutes until the cheese starts to go a little gooey and golden on top and the pastry is cooked.

9. Remove the trays for the oven and let them cool just enough for you to handle them safely. Arrange the tarts on a platter and finish each one with just a little more of the cranberry sauce and a few fresh thyme leaves. Serve warm.