Cherry Tarts - no sugar added
 

I was in the mood to experiment so I made these for DH's poker party the
other night. They got rave reviews! Unfortunately, there isn't really
a recipe but I will describe what I did. I made my favourite pie dough
and cut into rounds to fit my silicone muffin pan wells. I purposely
left the crust higher (1/4 - 1/2 in) and uneven around the top. The
reason for this was to provide a spot for the topping. I used home
canned sour cherries and the liquid with no sugar. I stirred in Clear
Jel (high cook kind for canning) into the cherries and cooked long
enough for the liquid to thicken. Then I stirred in about 1 tbsp cherry
whiskey to deepen the flavour. I did this while hot to help the alcohol
evapourate. The tarts were baked at 425 F until the crust was golden
brown. The rest of the alcohol should have burned off during this time.
While the tarts were cooking, I whipped heavy whipping cream. I added
a tbsp of cherry whiskey to tint and add a wee hint of flavour to the
whipped cream. Note, the tbsp was for the entire sm container of
whipped cream; I used about 1/4 of the resulting whipped cream for the
tarts. The result was a very pale pink whipped cream topping. About
one generous tsp of the topping was dropped into the centre of each
cooled tart leaving a rustic looking crust and rim of cherry filling.

Notes: No sweeteners including white sugar were added. A low fat
non-dairy whipped cream could take the place of real whipped cream for
those concerned over fat content. I only use real whipped cream but in
small amounts. A low fat pastry dough could be used. I figure the
pastry of one tart can't have that much fat, if you only eat one :) For
those who don't want to use alcohol, I would use a little almond
flavouring for the cherry filling as well as a little red food colouring
in the whipped cream or simply leave the whipped cream white.