Pear and Dolcelatte Tartlets

These pear and dolcelatte tartlets make for a ruddy marvellous yuletide starter or light lunch with a leafy sidekick.

Do not underestimate the deliciousness of these little angels.

45 mins | serves 4 | easy 

Ingredients

500g ready-rolled puff pastry

75g dolcelatte 

4 tbsp mascarpone 

2 pears, cored and sliced – conference good

1 egg, beaten to glaze

small handful pine nuts

2 sprigs thyme 

runny honey

Method

Heat oven to 180C/gas 6. Do this with the pastry 4 times:

Glaze the whole of the discs before adding the pastry cut offs on top as sides and then glaze all over again. Blind bake for 10mins, remove from the oven and push the centre circle of puffed up pastry down with a butter knife.

Mash together the dolcelatte and mascarpone and dot inside the border. Arrange slices of pear on top and pull a sprigs’ worth of thyme leaves over them.

Bake for 15 minutes then scatter with the pine nuts and thyme and bung back in for another 5 by which time the pastry should be puffy and golden, and cooked through, and the pine nuts a delicious toasty colour. Drizzle with a little honey before serving and decorate with sprigs of thyme.