Saturday, September 19, 2020

Tarte aux Fraises (Classic French Strawberry tart)


Spring is here, and the good news is that the strawberries are still sweet, unless you buy them from the supermarket. This traditional French dessert combines a buttery almond pastry crust, with juicy ripe strawberries and a parade of other seasonal fruits. Traditionally this tart is decorated just with strawberries, but with the bounty of other fresh fruits on hand at the moment, I decided to combine them with blueberries, mandarin segments, and kiwi fruit.

This is a no fuss tart that I have brushed with an apricot jam glaze on all of the fruits. Apricot jam is commonly used to glaze fruit tarts in France,  and this is what I used, as after baking my Apricot Almond Cake for Fathers' Day, I still have a lot of Apricot Jam left over. However other fruit based jams work just as well for glazing, such as peach jam, strawberry jam etc. I've also included a more traditional glaze recipe using potato flour and redcurrant jelly if you would like to try that. However they are not items that I keep on hand so I didn't try that glaze.

 I fondly remember when we were in France, every boulangerie (bakery) had display cabinets full of enticing and colourful fruit tarts. Well we can't travel there now unfortunately, but we can eat their famous tarts. Instead of using the traditional "creme patissiere" in my Tarte, I have used a French Chantilly style whipped cream, with swirls of homemade lemon curd laced through it. However the lemon curd is optional, and the tart will still taste great without it.  I think lemon curd could be the secret ingredient though. The beauty of this confection is that you can prepare it a couple of hours ahead of serving, it will stay in tact for a few hours in the refrigerator,  yes I tested this out, or wait to assemble it at the last moment. My friends I'd suggest the former as honestly who wants to be assembling a tart like this while your family or guests are waiting for dessert, not the French or moi that's for sure. 

This tart serves 10 generously so there can be plenty of leftovers if you are making this for fewer people. It tastes great the next day as well. It might look complicated to make this dessert, and to be honest I felt a bit challenged by it, but it turned out to be much simpler than I thought. At the back of my mind I was thinking of contingencies for a dessert replacement in case it didn't work out. Thankfully it came together beautifully so no contingency plan needed. 

Anyway let's cook.

Equipment:

Use a flat Willow pizza tray, 28 cm across for these ingredients. Or for a 23cm tray use 1/3 less ingredients. Line with Glad Bake. The only round pizza trays that I own now have holes in the base so I lined the tray first with alfoil and then covered the alfoil with baking parchment. It worked well. I then very carefully transferred the cooked and chilled pastry base to a serving plate for decorating.

Pastry Ingredients:

1 cup plain flour
120 g softened butter
2 tablespoons icing sugar
60 g slivered almonds

Method:

Mix butter and icing sugar together. Add the flour.

Mix into a paste.


Refrigerate the dough overnight. Allow the dough to soften the next day (you should be able to push your thumb through the mixture.) Or you could make the pastry and chill it for 30 minutes before using.

Press into the tray lined with Glad Bake, and flatten to the edges.
Press the slivered almonds into the surface of the dough,

Place into a medium oven, 180 deg. F for 10-15 minutes until cooked.

Allow to cool on the bench until ready to use or refrigerate for 1/2 hour.




Chantilly Cream Topping with Lemon Curd:

Mix together  3/4 cup whipped cream, including 2 tablespoon caster sugar or less, and a few drops of vanilla essence. Mix 3 tablespoons of homemade lemon curd through the whipped cream.

Spread onto tart base.


Decorate the cream with a combination or fresh seasonal fruits, such as Strawberries, mandarin,  blueberries, or kiwi fruit, or just strawberries.

Apricot Jam Glaze for fruits

2 tablespoons apricot jam

Method:

Warm up apricot jam in the microwave for 15 seconds and pass through a fine mesh strainer to discard any fruit chunks. 

Gently brush jam over the strawberries and other fruits.

Chill tart on your serving plate for up to 3 hours before serving.

Optional Fruit Glaze instead of Apricot Jam:

1 teaspoon potato flour,
3 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon redcurrant jelly

Method:

Bring to the boil until slightly thickened. Cool before spreading over the fruit

We are buying strawberries every weekend now from our local farmer's truck at Fresh As Sweet As, enjoying their juicy sweetness while we can. These strawberries actually taste like strawberries and now that they are getting smaller as the end of the season is imminent there are more to a punnet. They were a good size for this tart.

Thanks for dropping by and I hope your are finding time to relax this weekend.

Warm wishes

Pauline

























14 comments:

  1. All those beautiful fruits make me drool...and pairing with lemon curd and chantilly cream sounds really amazing.

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  2. This is gorgeous! And so full of flavor. Glad you used lemon curd with the Chantilly cream -- I love lemon (I go nuts over its flavor!) and it sounds delightful the way you used it. Really nice recipe -- thanks.

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    1. Thanks so much KR, yes sometimes the impromptu ideas to use certain ingredients become the winners don't they, such as using the lemon curd. Really lemon curd just has so many applications with cooking, love it's flavour as well.

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  3. Pauline, that looks sensational. I noticed that your blog is also taking a while before we are able to comment like mine is. I don't know why and I don't know how to fix it 😳

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    1. Thanks Chel, I don't know how to fix it either. Hopefully the Google IT people will come up with a fix in time. I just hope the whole platform isn't becoming fragile.

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  4. i do love a fruity tart, pauline. there were heaps of strawbs this year, tho they did tend to be a bit flavourless from the supermarket as you say. the new blogger interface is driving me nuts. just when i thought i had a handle on it, they went and changed it again last week! Grrrrrr!

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    1. You are more perceptive than me about individual changes to blogger Sherry, I just find everything seems to be a bit more cumbersome and slow. It would be nice to get some feedback from them. Thanks for your nice comment about the tart. Hope you have an enjoyable week. It's warming up here so I won't be in the kitchen as much.

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  5. It is so sad we cannot travel - but what a great way to bring France to you. I have this recipe in French sitting on my desk waiting to be made :)

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  6. Thanks Tandy, so you understand fluent French, that's exciting. My son's partner is French so I am very conscious of all things French, and understand High School French.

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    1. Thanks for your comment Dennis, nice to hear from you online. it is a delicious tart.

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  8. Your tart is so pretty and I like the idea of almonds in the pastry.

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    1. Thanks so much Cakelaw. The almonds give it a beautiful flavour and also make it easier to slice the tart into portions.It's a very versatile pastry.

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