Bake 52 Week 28: Fresh Fruit Tart

This week we did a fresh fruit tart.  The first step was to make the tart dough.  I saw that there was an option to make a chocolate dough so I decided right away that I was doing that.  Making the tart was very easy, whisk the wet ingredients

blend the dry ingredients in a food processor, add in the chilled butter

and blend to get a cornmeal consistency. 

Last step was to pour in the wet ingredients while the processor is running and let it run until the dough comes together in a ball around the blade. 

Then you dump out the ball and wrap it in plastic wrap to chill.  This is where I noticed a problem. I had quite a bit of dry ingredients that didn't get blended into the dough. 

I tried to "knead" some of it into the dough but I found that it was separating the dough.  So I left the rest.  It's funny when I looked at the picture of the dough in the food processor it's pretty obvious there is some unblended stuff under it.  I wonder why I didn't notice that at the time...

I chilled the dough for several hours because I mis-timed the whole thing and had to finish the tart after church.

The pastry cream was very fast to make but high stress (at least for me).  As  result I didn't get any pictures of it other than this (the half-and-half mixture beginning to simmer). 

I blended the egg yolks, cornstarch and 2 tbls of sugar while my half-and-half begins to simmer.  I was just getting the butter out of the frig to prep it when I turned around and my half-and-half was boiling over!  Crap!!  I pulled it off the heat and said, "Jonathan!  Can you come help me for a minute?"  Luckily my husband is wonderful and didn't even hesitate.  He jumped right up and was in the kitchen before I could blink.  I got him to cut up the butter while I tempered the egg mixture.  I got the eggs tempered and all back in to the pot just as Jonathan finished the butter and before I could even ask Jonathan to put the butter in the frig to chill the pastry was thick.  Like I said it happened really fast!  I got Jonathan to dump the butter in the pot and while I stirred it in Jonathan got me the vanilla.  I couldn't find any vanilla bean at Stater Bro's.  He measured out the vanilla for me and after a quick stir the pastry cream was done! 

I got it covered with plastic wrap and into the frig to chill.  It had to chill 3 hours but I had to be in church in less than three hours so everything had to wait. 

Once I got home I pulled the dough out of the frig and let it warm up for 10 minutes.  After ten minutes I tried to roll it out, but it was still way too cold.  I ended up having to let it sit for almost 30 minutes before I could roll it out.  Even then I had a really hard time with it tearing.  I don't know if all tart dough is like that or if it's because I didn't get all the dry ingredients mixed in.  You can see how fragile the dough is in the picture below.

I don't have a tart pan and the four different stores I went to this week didn't have one either.  So I used a 9" glass pie pan.  I carefully laid the dough across the pan and eased it down into the edges of the pie pan. 

Then I carefully trimmed away the excess and made sure that the dough was even all the way around the edge.  I used some of the excess to try and patch the thin/broken areas. 

Then I stuck the pie pan in the freezer for 30 minutes.  Once it was frozen I carefully covered the dough with two layers of aluminum foil and then filled the pan with beans. 

I baked it for 30 minutes before pulling out the aluminum foil and a little of the dough came with the foil.  I cooked it for another 6 minutes before setting it out to cool. 

While the tart dough cooked I prepared the strawberries.  I decided to make the strawberry tart option because I wasn't able to find any raspberries.  Unfortunately, all my strawberries were frozen.  I was able to remove the stems but I don't know how well they'll work after freezing.  That was the result of some mis-communication between me and Jonathan.  He feels like we need more freezer space.  We have two refrigerator/freezer combinations.  We don't have much in the refrigerator in the garage but both freezers are packed.  Jonathan turned the temperature control all the way down on the frig to see if we could use that as a freezer.  He told me he had planned to do it but I didn't realize that he had done it.  One of the things in that frig were my strawberries.  Oops...

After the tart crust had sat out for about 40 minutes I decided it was cool enough to finish. 

I needed to get this done so I could have a piece before bedtime.  The tart quickly came together with the cream in the bottom and strawberries on top. 

I didn't really like the quartered strawberries between the whole ones.  I thought it looked funny, but I left the few I'd placed there. 

I used strawberry jam for my glaze. 

I didn't want to buy a special jam for that and figured strawberry jam on strawberries would work just fine.  Finally, time for a piece! 

The strawberries were a bit difficult to cut through so I sort of went around them.  If you make this I'd recommend slicing the strawberries and laying them in overlapping layers.  I think that would look better and be much easier to cut and serve.  The crust cut very well.  I was a little worried it would be too crisp and sort of shatter with the first cut.  It also came right out of the pan.  That was the other thing I worried about since you were supposed to use a tart pan with a removeable bottom.  My pastry cream also sort of ran all over the place after I removed a piece.  I don't know if that was because I didn't let the crust chill long enough or what.  But I think you'd get nicer looking pieces if you let the whole thing chill for a bit before serving so the cream stayed firm. 

The flavor was mixed... I loved the chocolate crust.  I could eat that just as a plain cookie.  It was very tasty.  The strawberries actually worked out just fine and I didn't really notice any flavor from the strawbery glaze but the pastry cream... Jonathan thought it had a terrible after taste.  I thought it tasted too much like fake vanilla.  Maybe it was because I used vanilla extract instead of a vanilla bean?  Or maybe it's because I used real vanilla extract and always before (because I'm cheap) I've used imitation vanilla extract.  Who knows...  For me other than the cream being kind of off it was very good.  I still ate a whole piece.  So it couldn't have been that bad.  :-)

Sorry all my pictures are blurry.  I'm not sure what happened there.  If you want the full recipe check out Amanda's blog.  For the chocolate crust just replace 1/4 cup of flour with 1/4 cup of dutch processed cocoa.