Gluten Free: Cheese and Onion Tartlets

Gluten free bread has come a long way from the hideous polystyrene-y vacuum-packed stuff of not many years ago. Thanks to companies like Warburtons, Fria and Genius, GF bread is actually quite good. The problem is, if you're the only Coeliac in the village your house, it's nigh on impossible to eat the whole loaf before it turns blue. You can freeze it, but gluten free bread doesn't defrost particularly well (except Fria bread, which comes already frozen), so you're left making mountains of toast – not always a bad thing, I'll admit – or loads of breadcrumbs.

You could call these tartlets Caramelised Onion and Camembert Croustades and, if you're cooking for fancy people, you should, but I prefer Toasty Tartlets. It does, after all, best describe what they are. You can top these tartlets with whatever you like: walnut, pear and stilton; sundried tomato and mozzarella; goats cheese and fig or olive tapenade. They're the ideal addition to a picnic (probably an indoor picnic, but there must be a few sunny days of summer left to come) and make easy canapes or a simple starter, when served with some dressed salad leaves.

Cheese and Onion Toasty Tartlets (makes 12)
You'll need:

• 6-12 slices of gluten free bread (depending on the size of the slices)
• a big knob of butter, melted
• 4 tbsp caramelised onion chutney (Sainsbury's Taste the Difference chutney is gluten free)
• 100g camembert, cut into small chunks
• a sprig of rosemary

Make it!

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4.
2. Cut the crusts off the GF bread and roll each slice to 2mm thick with a rolling pin. If the bread is stale and it starts crumbling, brush it with a little melted butter. Using a pastry cutter, cut rounds of bread to fit your shallow bun tin.
3. Lightly coat a shallow bun tin with melted butter and gently press rounds of flattened bread into it. 
4. Brush the bread round with butter and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the tin and leave on a cooling rack (if you went a bit mad with the butter, sit the tartlet cases on a piece of kitchen paper to absorb some grease). They'll keep in an airtight container for a few days.
5. When ready to serve, place a teaspoon of onion chutney into each tartlet case and top with chunks of camembert and a few rosemary leaves. Bake for 5 minutes, to melt the cheese, then serve warm.