Mini Fruit Tarts

My favortie food in all the world is a good fruit tart! Not ones with limp fruit in nasty jelly-glaze, and not ones that are too sour, but ones with plenty of sweet custard cream and nice fresh berries of any kind, mmm mmm mmm!

So for my Fairy Tea Party, where everything I made was bite-sized, I baked the shortbread crusts in miniature muffin tins. I've discovered that Shortbread often needs to come out earlier than recipes claim because it tends to taste best before it actually looks golden brown. This is doubly true for these small ones. I think I only cooked them for about 15 minutes instead of half an hour like I do for a large pie-sized one. Right after I pulled these out of the oven I placed a little piece of bittersweet chocolate in the center and then covered the pan to keep in the heat while the chocolate melted, then spread it around to cover most of the top. Then I put a little mound of creamy custard - I like the recipe in The New Best Recipe cookbook. Orriginally I had planned to put just one blackberry on top of each, but they didn't have any at the store, so I went with blueberries. The three small berries ended up working out perfectly because these take about three bites (at least for me with my small mouth) so there's a berry in every bite