Carrot Halwa Cups/tarts

After successfully baking few cakes, I decided to turn my attention towards pies and tarts. I love to watch TLC or any other channel which shows cookery programs specially related to baking. Nigella Lawson and Rachell Allen are my favourite hosts and I love their baking. So I decided to first try the popular Apple pie. I actually followed recipe from http://www.joyofbaking.com/ApplePie.html this site. And I felt this is lot of work because of all the work I had to do for apple filling plus I'm the only one who like apple pie at home. So instead of baking huge pie, I decide to make smaller version of pies and tarts and savoury or sweet fillings. Now I really dont know difference between pies and tarts, so for my understanding I say covered once are pies and open once are tarts. The thing I liked about pies/tarts is once you know how to make short crust pastry you can perpare any kind of filling. I had once tried savoury cups with vegetable filling. I had prepared white sauce mixed it with assortment of vegetables (carrots, peas, french beans, spinach, sweet corns, mushrooms, etc). Once filling is done all I had to do is fill the cup size tarts (I used muffin/cupcake mold), put some cheese on top and bake. It proved to be instant hit as snacks. Advantage with using cupcake mold was each individual got to enjoyed his/her own customized tart and they looked beautiful on everyone's plate when served. Next time I decied to make sweet tarts. I had some condensed milk left so decided to make most popular bollywood sweet Gajar ka halwa in tart form. First I will explain short crust pastry preparation Ingredients: 2 cups Maida/ All purpose flour 1 cup butter (chilled and cut into cubes) 1 tsp salt 2-3 tsp sugar (skip this when making savoury pies/tarts) 1/2 cup cold water Mix maida, salt and sugar. Start adding butter cube by cube to maida. Mix it well so that the mixture looks crumbly. Add water (in small quantity) to this maida-butter mixture till you manage to make dough. Cover this dough in cling film and keep in fridge for minimum 30 mins. When you want to use it, take it out from fridge and roll out into desired thickness round. As I had to make separate tarts, I divided dough in 6 portions for 6 cupcake molds. Depending on the bakeware you are using you might have to modify quatity. But remember maida to butter ratio 2:1. Once you fit the rolled out dough in desired bakeware, you've to blind bake (refer to this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind-baking for details) this for 6-8 mins at 180 degree C. Make sure oven is preheated for 10-15 min. I've bajaj OTG(some 23ltrs capacity) in which I use top shelf for baking and use both side rods for baking. Once the cup tarts are baked, add the desired filling and bake for another 15-20 min or till filling is cooked. Now this timing will vary depending on wheather filling is partially cooked or completely cooked. You may have to do some trial and error on this one depending on your filling. Do try short crust pastry preparation at home and impress everyone. Only you'll know how simple it is. Regarding the butter quantity I've heard that you can replace it with milk and oil combination. I've not tried this, but will sure try and update this post accordingly. Till then happy baking.