I had a bit of a tart craze this weekend. Here is the first one: Strawberry Tart with vanilla pastry cream and chocolate curls.
STRAWBERRY TART RECIPE
Recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s book “Baking: From My Home to Yours”
Ingredients
For Sweet Tart Dough
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 stick plus 1 tbsp (9 tbsp) unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
- 1 large egg yolk
For Vanilla Pastry Cream
- 2 cups whole milk
- 6 large egg yolks
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted
- 1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 3 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into bits at room temperature
Method
- To prepare the sweet tart dough, pulse flour, sugar and salt in a food processor.
- Add butter and pulse until it resembles a coarse meal.
- Stir in the yolk and pulse again until the dough forms clumps and curds.
- Turn the dough out onto a work surface and very lightly and sparingly, knead just to incorporate dry ingredients. Place in the refrigerator and let the dough relax for half an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 375 F (190C) degrees. Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Freeze crust at least 30 minutes before baking.
- Bake blind for 25 minutes, remove the weight and bake for another 10 minutes. Let cool.
- To prepare the vanilla pastry cream, bring the milk to a boil in a small saucepan.
- In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk the yolks together with the sugar and cornstarch until thick and well blended. Still whisking, drizzle in about 1/4 cup of the hot milk. Whisking all the while, slowly pour in the remainder of the milk.
- Put the pan over medium heat and, whisking vigorously, contstantly and thoroughly bring the mixture to a boil. Keep at a boil, still whisking, for 1 to 2 minutes, then remove the pan from the heat.
- Whisk in the vanilla extract. Let sit for 5 minutes, then whisk in the bits of butter, stirring until they are fully incorporated and the pastry cream is smooth and silky.
- Scrape the cream into a bowl. Press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of the cream to create an airtight seal and refrigerate until cold or, if you want to cool it quickly put the bowl into a larger bowl filled with ice cubes and cold water and stir the pastry cream occasionally until it is thoroughly chilled, about 20 minutes.
- The pastry cream can be kept, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
- Pour the cooled pastry cream into the tart shell, flatten the top with a spatula and place strawberries, followed by chocolate curls.
Super super super! Looks delicious…Really Like the Header as well! Very vibrant!..
Aysegul
http://www.nysdelight.com
Um… Not to nitpick, but what happens with the chocolate and heavy cream? All I see are chocolate curls on the tart-which by the way looks really yummy.
I am useless when it comes to making chocolate curls 🙁
Daphne – You are right. I copied and pasted from another post with ganache tart filling and forgot to erase those two lines. Now it’s fixed. Sorry for the confusion.
Cenk, next time you want to go crazy again you’re more than welcome to use my kitchen. 🙂
yum yum! Strawberries!
I would like to comment on other tarts, where are they ? Show me the pictures, they were delicious and more tastefull. He is not posting all guys.
Pretty!
Thanks for the post, I’ve been looking for a good strawberry tart recipe. This may be dumb, but could you tell me what “bake blind” means? Thanks! Robin
Hi there Robin –
Blind baking means cooking the pastry shell without any filling. Baking the pastry shell before adding the contents yields a crisp, non-soggy tart case. You first line your tart/pie dish with the pastry, rest in the fridge for at least an hour, lay a sheet of baking parchment or greaseproof paper in the pastry case so it comes up the sides a bit and fill it with some kind of weight (it can be dried beans, rice (uncooked of course) or ceramic baking beans made especially for this purpose).
The idea is to weigh the paper and pastry down to prevent it from rising up during baking.
You usually bake your tart/pie blind for the specified time, then remove the weight and continue baking for a shorter period of time to give it some color.
Hope this helps!
Thank you so much! My past tart failures are starting to make some sense! 🙂
It almost looks too pretty to eat! But, I’d have to have some since it sounds delicious!
Glad I found this recipe now…just a few more days strawberries goes out of season and prices go crazy.
By the way, just a tip for Zeynep, I use vegetable peelers to make chocolate curls. I just run blades across the side of a chocolate bar and viola…curls! Hope this helps.
that looks superb! i made some tarts too but with graham crackers instead of short crust