Roasted Tomato and Brie Tartlets

While my daughter was here a few weeks ago, I made these tarts for lunch. I found the recipe on Caitlin's blog Roost, which I love. Her husband has Crohn’s disease so they follow a diet eliminating many major carbohydrates in addition to all sugars, processed foods, grains and starches. She uses her blog to showcase her recipes and her photography is brilliant. We don't follow a gluten free diet at my house, so I adapted the recipe a bit by making my regular pie crust (with a bit of chopped rosemary added) instead of the almond flour tart crust. You'll find the recipe for her almond-based crust at the end of the post. I also added a couple cloves of finely chopped garlic to the tomatoes before I roasted them. I used some little heirloom tomatoes I had in the fridge and we found some of the skins rather tough. You might want to skin yellow heirlooms before roasting by briefly dropping them in boiling water, but using all red grape tomatoes would probably eliminate this problem. I just liked the color combination.
Is anything more lovely than warm melting brie?

Roasted Tomato and Brie Tartlets
 

(Makes about 8)

Ingredients:
2 pints cherry tomatoes
2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
a small wheel of brie cheese 
a big bunch of fresh basil, chopped
8 almond herb tartlets (I doubled the recipe below to make 8)
aged balsamic for garnish

Method:
Make the tart shell of your choice. Bake and cool.
Next pour the tomatoes onto a foil lined baking sheet, sprinkle with the chopped garlic, add salt and pepper and toss with olive oil. Roast in a 350F oven for about 20-30 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside. Leave oven on.
Place two or three slices of the brie into each tart shell (the tarts should be removed from their tart pans at this point) Top with several cherry tomatoes and place each tartlet into the oven for about 5-10 minutes or until the tartlets are warm and the cheese is nice and gooey. Remove from oven. Sprinkle with chopped basil and drizzle the aged balsamic on top.

Caitlin's Rosemary Almond Tart Shell

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups blanched almond flour 
1/4 tsp salt
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
1 tablespoon water

Method:
Preheat oven to 350F. 
In a large bowl, combine the almond flour, salt, and rosemary. Stir the wet ingredients into the almond flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Press the dough into a 9-inch tart pan or 5 mini tartlet pans (I spray my tart pans with nonstick spray to help them come out easy!!)
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until lightly brown. Remove from the oven and let cool for 15 minutes. Then place tarts (still in the pans) in the fridge for 30 minutes...getting them cold will aid in removing them from their pans.  
Remove the tarts from the fridge. Flip each one upside down, hold it in your hand and tap the bottom with a spoon or knife and the tart should slide right out. If it doesn't keep tapping and gently squeeze the tart pans. 
Once out of the pan carefully place each tart right side up on a baking sheet. Be careful these tarts are crumbly!