Butternut Cookie Chocolate Tarts

Today's "recipe" is kind of a non-recipe, but it is a really quick, easy and neat trick for making little caramel or chocolate tarts with an oat base with minimal effort.

In Australia, we have oatmeal cookies called butternut snap cookies, made by Arnotts.  They are the hard, non-flexible type of oatmeal cookie.  They can be used to make little tart cases by heating them, four at a time, in an oven pre-heated to 200 degrees Celsius, until they are soft (takes around a couple of minutes), then while they are still soft, pressing them into a patty cake tin or with the back of a teaspoon so that they form perfect little tart cases.  You must only work with a few at a time because they harden again very quickly, and they crack or break rather than curve if you don't work quickly.

Here are the results:

You can then fill them with whatever you please, but for a super easy, super quick treat, I filled them with chocolate pie filling from a can - mine was from Aldi, but you can also buy one made by Nestle.  See the photo at the top of the post for the end result.  Ta da - quick, tasty and no baking skills required.

The recipe idea has been printed all over the place, but one source is here.  I ate one of these little tarts and deemed them good. 

Now for a really sad story.  I attempted to take the rest of the tarts to work on the train in a cupcake carrier - and I mean attempted.  A very rude, very arrogant person pushed past  where I was standing on the train.  He didn't say excuse me or ask me to move so he could get past - he just shoved through.  As a result, he knocked the cupcake carrier out of my hand, and all the tarts fell face down onto the floor of the train.  This created a terrible mess, as you can imagine, and I had to do my best to scoop up the wreckage into the carrier, and went to work with goo all over my hands.  Now here is where it takes the cake - after glancing at what he had done, this person went to move on without saying or doing anything to help or apologise.  I am no wilting violet, so I asked him if he was going to help to pick them up.  His response was to the effect that it was my fault for being in his way, and did little or nothing to help before moving on as though nothing had happened. And there he was, wearing a fancy suit, and probably going to work to schmooze clients and pretend that he was a great guy.

I refused to let this individual spoil my day - I stood with my head held high, cleaned up my person and my cupcake carrier at work, and got on with my day.