These Middle Eastern-inspired Turkey, Apricot & Cranberry Tarts are filled with lots of delicious warming spices and dried fruit. These succulent tarts are super easy and will make a great holiday appetizer this season!
Read on to see how to make this tasty holiday appetizer recipe! Recipe in collaboration with Red Barn Market.
Inspired by Middle-Eastern Sfeeha Pastries
These Middle Eastern-inspired appetizers were inspired by traditional sfeeha pastries. Sfeeha are typically made with ground lamb, onions, tomato paste, and a bunch of delicious warm spices. They are also traditionally wrapped in a homemade yeast-based dough, which makes them extra tender and delicious.
A Few Holiday-Friendly Shortcuts
While making traditional sfeeha is not too complicated, I have taken a few shortcuts to make this recipe a lot easier during the busy holiday season. I use simple ingredients to make the filling, and swap out traditional lamb for festive ground turkey. Onions, warm spices, and dried fruit also add tons of flavour.
The best part about this filling is that it is super simple to make, and you actually assemble the pastries with the raw filling, so there is no need to cook it in advance! This saves some time (and dishes) as you can fully cook the meat through in the oven.
I also use store-bought puff pastry to make the assembly even easier. Puff pastry is always a staple in my freezer throughout the year, but particularly during the holidays as it’s pre-made and super simple to roll out and fill with any ingredient you like.
How to Achieve a Beautiful Star Shape
Through my recipe testing, I found that cutting the puff pastry into rounds actually helps to create the best star shape. The circle also holds the filling in better as the round edges hugs the filling when you pinch the pastry closed. When folded together, the tart shape actually turns from a circle into a beautiful star shape. So to give it the best presentation, opt to cut out the circles.
Cutting out circles of puff pastry does cause a bit of waste, so if you want to simply cut and fold the pastry using a square shape, that will work too. Just make sure to really fold the edges over as I found that when I cut the puff pastry into squares and pinched the corners closed, the puff pastry was a bit looser and unfolded a bit in the oven.
Whichever way you fold the pastries, they will still be delicious!
Get the Recipe!
Turkey, Apricot & Cranberry Tarts
Ingredients
- 400 g ground turkey
- ½ cup yellow onion finely grated
- ½ cup dried cranberries
- ½ cup dried apricots cut into 1-cm cubes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground all spice
- 2 sheets puff pastry
- ½ cup flour for rolling out puff pastry sheets
- 1 large egg beaten
- 1 tablespoon water
- ¼ cup chopped parsley for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
- Add the ground turkey, grated onion, cranberries, apricots, salt, pepper and spices to a large mixing bowl. Mix all the ingredients together until combined.
- Sprinkle some flour on a clean worksurface and use a rolling pin to roll out the puff pastry into a 12x12 inch square.
- Use a 4-inch round cookie cutter to cut out 9 circles of puff pastry per sheet. This will give you 18 tarts.
- Beat the egg and the 1 tablespoon of water together in a small bowl to create an egg wash.
- Add 1 heaping tablespoon of the turkey mixture to the center of each puff pastry round and press down so that the turkey mixture is 1 cm thick. Use a pastry brush to brush the egg wash on the edges of the puff pastry and pinch the sides together to seal.
- Transfer the assembled tart to a parchment-lined baking sheet and continue the process for the rest of the tarts, making sure to space them at least 1 inch apart from each other.
- Brush the edges of the tarts with the egg wash to create a golden finish then bake in the oven for 15 minutes, or until golden brown.
- Transfer the warm tarts to a serving platter and garnish with some chopped parsley. Enjoy!
