The Tartlet

I know it's been a while, but I have a good excuse, I promise! Work has been dominating my life, but now it's half term (well the end of) so it's time to let my hair down (and tie it back when baking) and have some fun in the kitchen!

My bake this time has been inspired by my recent visit to Belgium, more precisely Ghent (lovely place to visit) and a little boutique bakery/coffee house called Paul's. Now Paul, I don't know who you are but I salute you. The strawberry tart that I had was absolutely delicious, down to the last crumb. The berries themselves were sweet and juicy, the creme pat was dreamy and creamy and the sweet pastry was divine. All in all a heavenly experience (and I rarely bestow that honour on any thing I eat - Eleni's, I'm coming back for you)!

So anyway, back to my baking frenzy.

I decided to have a go at making my own version of this deliciously sweet treat. My experiments led me to use a sweet pastry recipe by the wonderful chef Collette Christian. I did adjust it slightly by adding some extra vanilla because everything could use a little extra vanilla! I did find that my pastry dough was a little soft when trying to roll it out (which could be down to the extra added moisture (oops). In hindsight I could have left it in the fridge for a while longer or put it in the freezer for about 20 minutes to firm it up, but what's done is done.

As for fillings.

I decided to pull the frozen cherries out of the freezer and give them a try. I made a cherry pie filling using a closely guarded family recipe and I made a strawberry filling using some jam thinned down (because this was the only thing I could see on the web to do with strawberries).

While the fillings cooled down, I made the creme patissiere. This is going to be the base of my tart. I chose to use vanilla bean paste rather than vanilla extract. They both do the same thing, except with the paste you can see the tiny flecks of vanilla through the creme pat and with the extract your end product is slightly darker but still full of flavour.

While the fillings and custard were cooling I baked my tart shells. Now, I did a little experimenting on top of the experiment and put grease proof paper (parchment paper to some readers) in one half (right), and I used cupcake liners on the other half (left). You can really see the difference in the picture below. It probably would have helped to use an actual tart tin, but needs must.

Now it's time to make them look presentable with one last minute addition - chantilly cream (everything tastes better with a little chantilly cream)!

After carefully taking my tart shells out, I began to assemble the tarts. First, I piped in my pastry cream.

Next, I swirled in my chantilly cream.

After that, I spooned on the fruit compotes. I used strawberries and cherries to my tarts.

Apart from the thick tart shells (they really should be 2-3mm) they tasted great. The tartness of the fruit with the creaminess of the pastry and chantilly creams made for a lovely combination.

I hope you are inspired to make your own versions of these tasty tarts.

Happy Baking,

Nicky