STRAWBERRY TART

Leia em PORTUGUÊS

A few Many posts ago, I wrote about strawberries, how sweet they are here in Korea! At the end of the post there was a photo of  a strawberry tart I made, but did not post the recipe. Now, as promised, I'm finally releasing the recipe. It is nothing special or fancy, but delicious. It is not very sweet, because the strawberries themselves are sweet enough, but feel free to use more sugar in the pastry cream in case you prefer desserts on the sweeter side, or in case your strawberries are not so sweet.

The recipe provided here yields a tart approximately 9" diameter. I decided to make mini tartlets, and for this reason I had some leftover filling.

STRAWBERRY TART

Pastry:

1 cup all purpose flour 

1/2 cup corn starch 

100g butter, cold and diced

1 Tbsp sugar 

1/2 tsp salt 

1 egg

Put all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and process until it comes together into a ball (this should take less than a minute). Don't over process. If you want to make by hand, mix dry ingredients in a bowl and rub the butter into the mixture.  Add the egg and work the dough until it comes together into a ball.

Due to different flours and butters, you may need to add a little more flour if the dough is too sticky or add a little more butter if it is too dry. However, note that the addition of sugar will make the dough a little stickier than a savory pastry, which is normal.

Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest in the fridge for around 30 minutes.

How to blind bake the pastry:

Preheat the oven at 180°C (350°F).

Remove dough from the fridge and roll it out to line a 9" baking pan. If you prefer, you can use small muffin pans to make individual tartlets. These will require less filling, so you could reduce the pastry cream by about 30%.

Line the dough with parchment paper or aluminum foil and fill with pie weights. If you don't have pie weights, you can use dry beans, rice, or chickpeas, as I did. They can be, then, reused for the same purpose, but not for cooking anymore. However, they can last a long time if kept in airtight glass jars, and can be used to blind bake many times, they don't burn easily.

Bake in preheated oven at 180°C (350°F) for 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven, remove pie weights and parchment or foil and bake for additional 10 minutes or until it just starts to turn golden.

Remove from the oven, let it sit for a few minutes and remove from pan onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Filling (Pastry Cream):

(adapted from Paris Boulangerie by Linda Dannenberg)

500ml milk

6 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

4 Tbsp corn starch

2 tsp vanilla extract

Boil the milk.

Whisk egg yolks with sugar until thick and pale. Add corn starch and whisk until well blended. Add milk slowly, whisking constantly.

Pour the mixture back into the pan and cook on medium heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens.

Remove from heat, add vanilla extract.

Cover with cling film, touching the surface of the cream so that it won't form a crust. Cool completely.

Assembling the Tart:

Spoon the pastry cream over the cooled shell.

Spread strawberries over the whole surface of the cream. They can be used whole, halved or sliced, and can be added at your taste. Around 400g would be a good average. If you are making mini tartlets, like I did, use one strawberry per tartlet. I know... my strawberries were a little too big for my tartlets :o)

Alternatively, you can brush the strawberries with some jam that has been thinned with a little boiling water and strained.