Individual tarts are the quintessential dessert. What's more flattering than getting your own dessert? Almost any full size tart can be turned into an individual tart by making individual tart shells. Wherein lies the problem. Most shells are one half to three fourths inch tall. By the time you get a regular pie or tart pastry in them, they shrink when baked and there is almost no side left to hold the filling.
I ran into this problem when I had my bakery. We did a lot of European Tarts, the name I gave to the shorter tart to distinguish it from a deep dish tart, which we also did. It was important the crust did not have to be blind baked. When producing a bunch of tarts, it is simply too time consuming to line them with foil, fill them with beans, bake them, take out the beans and finish baking them if it is a fully baked crust. Just writing about it is too time consuming!...