Fresh fruit tart 9 Inch
I love a classic French fruit tart. The tart is a gorgeous round butter tart shell filled with silky vanilla pastry cream, topped with generous fresh mixed fruit arranged as beautifully as a work of art. And it tastes just as good as it looks.
Ingredients
For the Vanilla Pastry Cream
· 2 cups whole milk
· 1/2 cup sugar
· 3 tablespoons cornstarch
· 1 egg
· 2 egg yolks
· 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
· 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
For the Pastry Crust
· 1 recipe pâte sucrée (recipe follows in link, below)
To Finish
· 2 pints fresh berries of choice, rinsed and fully dried, plus any other sliced fruit you’d like to use, such as sliced kiwi or mango
· 1/4 cup apricot jam
Instructions
For the Pastry Crust
1. Complete the pâte sucrée through baking and cooling.
TIP: This will take a few hours total, though most of that is inactive chilling and baking time. This can be done up to 2 days in advance; store wrapped or in an airtight container.
For the Vanilla Pastry Cream
1. Heat the milk with a couple tablespoons of sugar just until boiling. Remove from heat.
2. While the milk is warming, in a heat-proof mixing bowl, whisk together the remaining sugar, egg, egg yolks, and cornstarch. Whisk until the mixture is very smooth and lightened in color, about 2 or 3 minutes.
3. Whisking constantly, whisk about a quarter of the hot milk into the egg mixture.
PRO TIP: This is called tempering. Tempering the eggs helps raise their temperature without cooking them, and helps emulsify them into the milk.
4. Pour the milk-tempered egg mixture into the pot of the remaining milk. Whisk to combine. Return the pot to the heat and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent “scrambled eggs” on the sides and bottom, until the magic happens and the pastry cream thickens, about 2 minutes. Stir in the butter and vanilla and cook one minute more, stirring constantly. The pastry cream should make thick, lazy bubbles.
5. Pour the thickened pastry cream into a clean, shallow bowl set over an ice bath. Stir gently until the pastry cream cools to warm room temperature and no more steam comes off the top.
PRO TIP: setting the bowl on a bag of frozen vegetables works great as an easy ice bath alternative, and there’s no risk of water splashing in.
6. Cover the pastry cream with plastic wrap set directly on the surface of the pastry cream. This prevents a skin from forming on top. Chill.
To Finish
1. Transfer the tart shell onto a cardboard round or whatever serving dish you will be using. (Once it is filled with the pastry cream and fruit, the tart will be too heavy and delicate to move.)
2. Pour the pastry cream into the tart shell, leaving a ¼” brim. (If you have any extra pastry cream, enjoy it as a parfait with some fresh berries.)
3. Arrange a generous amount of fruit and berries in a layer over the pastry cream in your desired design.
4. Heat ¼ cup apricot jam with 1 tablespoon or so of water over medium heat, whisking, until thin. Strain, if needed, through a sieve. Use a pastry brush to gently dab the entire fruit tart with a thin layer of apricot glaze. Chill until ready to serve.
There are three main components to this fruit tart:
· A shortbread tart shell, also known as a short dough crust or pâte sucrée
· Vanilla custard, also known as vanilla pastry cream or crême pâtissière
· Lots of beautiful fresh fruit
· Bonus component: a simple apricot glaze to make it shine and lock in the fruit’s freshness.
The first step is to make the tart shell. This shortbread cookie crust is easy to mix, but does require a little time to chill the dough fully, and then bake and cool.
1. In a food processor, combine the ingredients and mix until the dough comes together.
2. Turn the dough out onto a clean, lightly-floured surface. Flatten into a disk and chill well.
3. Roll the chilled, rested dough to about 10″ diameter. Drape it into a tart shell. Trim the scrap.
4. Dock the bottom of the crust all over with the tines of a fork. Chill again.
5. Line the tart dough shell with parchment or two layers of foil. (I prefer parchment.) Fill the shell with dried beans or pie weights, and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
6. Remove the weights, and continue baking for 5 to 10 minutes more, until golden brown. Cool fully.
7. While the pastry crust is in process, make the vanilla custard filling. The custard is a traditional vanilla pastry cream, sweet and silky and made from milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, butter, and cornstarch as a thickener.
8. Pastry cream requires only a few ingredients, but you will need a little bit of technique savvy.
9. Stir. A lot. Once you add the eggs to the pot of hot milk, the eggs risk cooking instead of emulsifying into custard. So stir constantly and scrape the sides and bottom of the pot continuously. That’s where the “scrambled eggs” like to form.
10.Eliminate clumps. If you do accidentally form coagulated egg bits, just strain the finished pastry cream with a fine mesh strainer. Done.
11.If you’re storing your pastry cream, lay plastic wrap directly on top to prevent “skin” from forming.
12.Use your pastry cream within two days (preferably one). The cornstarch will weep its absorbed moisture through a fancy-sounding process called starch retro gradation, and the pastry cream will become rubbery.
13.Fresh berries are a top choice for a French fruit tart. Berries look gorgeous and generally stay perky longer than cut fruit. Other good fruit for a tart includes mango and kiwi slices. Mango and kiwi add a great pop of color and will not oxidize.
14.Avoid melon and other fruit with high moisture content, like sliced citrus. These will look wilted quickly and seep moisture into the pastry cream. Also avoid oxidizing fruit like apples and bananas. These fruits will turn brown and make the fruit tart look old and less pretty.
15. You can do a more traditional French design of carefully-arranged fruit, a more free-form fruit pattern, or a mix. Have fun! If you’d like to do a mango or kiwi slice rosette, start from the outside and work your way to the center, overlapping each slice a little on top of the next.
Finally, heat some apricot jam thinned with a bit of water, strain, and dab it all over the fruit with a pastry brush. The jam will give a shiny, finished look to the tart, and help seal in freshness.
More at ArtsOrigin.com
