Tarts with Cream & Fruit (and Meringues!)

Time for something sweet, time for dessert! And since the spring has already started and the summer is approaching, what better way of celebrating that than with crispy tarts with homemade cream and lots of fruit!

These tarts are absolutely delicious and they look amazing. I made four smaller ones, but of course you can also make one large tart.

The pastry is not complicated to make, but you have to take into account that it is time-consuming, because it needs to sit in the fridge for an hour first and then in the freezer for another hour before it goes in the oven. So read the entire recipe before starting and organize your time well.

You can use any topping you like. I used raspberries and blueberries, but you can use any fruit really. And if you don’t like fruit (shame on you!), you can simply sprinkle the cream generously with chocolate flakes!

U need

Pastry:

½ vanilla pod
125 grams of butter
100 grams of icing sugar
small pinch of salt
255 grams of flour
zest of ½ a lemon
2 egg yolks (keep the egg whites!)
2 tablespoons of cold milk or water

Cream:

½ vanilla pod

2 cups of milk

5 egg yolks (keep the egg whites!)

2 tablespoons of flour

¾ cup of sugar

Topping:

Mixed fruit (any you like)

Dark chocolate

How to make it

First of all you need to make your pastry. Score down the length of the vanilla pod and remove the seeds from one half by scraping a knife down the inside. Cream together the butter, icing sugar and salt and then rub in the flour, vanilla seeds, lemon zest and egg yolks – you can do all this by hand or in a food processor. When the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs, add the cold milk or water. Pat and gently work the mixture together until you have a ball of dough – don’t work the pastry too much otherwise it will become too elastic and chewy, not flaky and short as you want it to be, then flour it lightly, roll it into a large sausage shape and wrap the dough in cling-film and place in the fridge to rest for at least an hour. Remove it from the fridge, slice it up and line a tart mould with the slivers (not too thick!). Push them together and tidy up the sides by trimming off any excess. Place the tart mould into the freezer for an hour. 

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Take the pastry out of the freezer and bake in the preheated oven for about half an hour to 45 minutes (until golden brown).

Meanwhile, make the cream. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until fluffy and creamy and add the vanilla seeds from the other half of the vanilla pod. Then add the flour and mix well until you obtain a smooth texture. Heat up the milk until boiling point and slowly add it to the mixture while mixing energetically with a whisk. Once the cream is smooth in texture, pour it into a pan and let it boil gently on a very small flame for about 5 minutes, stirring the entire time. After the cream has cooled down, put it in the fridge for about an hour, so it becomes firmer.

After that, fill the tart(s) with the cream, put the fruit on top and sprinkle with flakes of dark chocolate (you can either grate or finely chop the chocolate). 

Yum!

P.S. 

From the left over egg whites I made meringues! This is probably the most popular egg-white recipe of all, whipped with fine sugar into tall, stiff, shining peaks, then very lightly baked so that the surface is crisp and the centre is soft and chewy. The tricky bit is whisking the egg whites, but the way the meringues are cooked is important, too. The oven should be pre-heated to 135°C, but do make sure you are not going to be using it for anything else, since the meringues stay in the oven until it is completely cold, so that they partly bake and then slowly dry out.

The proportion of sugar is always 50 g for each egg white. Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks are formed. Next, whisk the sugar in on fast speed, about a tablespoon at a time, until you have a stiff and glossy mixture with a satin sheen. Spoon onto baking sheets lined with baking parchment ready for baking. They go into the oven at 135°C and once baked (after about 45-60 min.), the oven should be turned off and the meringues left in there, undisturbed, until the oven is completely cold.