caprese tarts

Caprese means prepared with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, basil leaves, and drizzled with olive oil.  These caprese tarts are exactly that all snuggled in a flaky pie dough and baked to perfection.

I usually only ever make blackraspberry tarts.  But then one day I had a friend from work BEG me for some tarts or a pie.  She was all like “it’s my birthday!” “It’s my adorable son’s birthday!” That was enough to convince me, so I decided to experiment and I made a variety of tarts.  Mixed berry, strawberry rhubarb, redberry cherry…..

They turned out amazing.  But since I always make “sweet” tarts, I wanted to try savory ones instead.  I finally had some regular tomatoes in my garden not just the gross cherry tomatoes that came out of nowhere.  I was eating a lot of caprese salads and I was going to make a white pizza but changed my mind and thought how about a caprese tart.

Caprese tarts

Fresh tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and I used garlic infused olive oil.

You can use homemade or store bought premade pie dough.  just roll out the dough and  quarter it.  I find that it’s easiest to hold the quartered piece of dough in your hand to fill it with ingredients then you can tuck the dough around it easier too. Layer the tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil then drizzle with olive oil.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 20-25 minutes or until dough starts to brown slightly.  Let cool and devour with a nice glass of white wine.  (Wine optional of course.)

This is my pie dough recipe that I use ALL the time.  It comes on the Crisco container if you don’t feel like writing it down.  I’m strictly a Crisco pie girl.  I’ve tried butter and even butter and Crisco combinations.  I like flakiness of the pie dough that my Crisco recipe creates.

standard pie dough recipe

3/4 cup Crisco

1 tsp salt

2 cups flour

3-5 Tbls ice cold water

combine flour and salt in a bowl.  cut in Crisco with a pastry blender.  Once it looks like coarse meal add water 1 Tbl at a time until mixture just barely comes together.  combine mix with hands and form into a ball. wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate 1 hour.