Zoe's Yum Yums

Another great creation from my Parisian culinary exploits. I made this the other day in a heart-shaped tin for one of my best friends who went off to university on Friday afternoon! In the end I also decided to call this the I’m-going-to-miss-you-so-much-PLEASE-DON’T-go! tart, a bit of a mouthful though, so maybe we should stick to Strawberry Tart for now. It’s really good – a light and crumbly pastry with a bit of a zesty kick, lashings of gorgeously creamy vanilla-y crème patissière and a pile of strawberries (or other fruit of your choice) to top it all off. It’s pretty lip-smackingly good, very easy and non-time consuming to prepare,s o would also make for a great dinner party dessert too.

So crème patissière. I promise you it’s nothing to be afraid of. Plenty of people think ‘Oh God, no, I’m not making that from scratch!!  It’s impossible and oh so hard and it’s only going to go wrong!’ Well my friends, I can assure you it’s not as difficult as you may think. Just ensure you read and re-read the recipe as many times as your brain can take so that you familiarise yourself with the procedure. Also measure everything out before you start, as you don’t want to be keeping an eye on hot mixtures that you don’t want to boil over while trying to measure out butter and vanilla. You’ll only get yourself in a tizz. I’ll lay this out step by step by step to make it as easy for you as possible

We start with this first as it needs time to set in the fridge while we get on with the pastry.

450g/1lb whole milk (I used semi-skimmed and it was fine)

4 egg yolks

120g/4oz sugar

60g/2oz corn starch

60g/2oz

1 tbsp vanilla extract

Dissolve the cornstarch in 1/4 cup of the milk.

Whisk in the egg yolks.

Combine the rest of the milk with sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil.

Pour 1/3 of the boiling milk over the egg mixture, then pour this back into the saucepan.

Boil for 1 minute, whisking continually.

Remove from the heat, and beat in the butter and vanilla.

Transfer the mixture to a cold container and cover in cling film. Press the wrap directly onto the surface of the cream to prevent a nasty skin from forming.

Now on to the much less scary part. The pastry for this is called a sablé (meaning sandy), and is almost more like a shortbread cookie dough than pastry in it’s consistency. You could probably use this dough to make cookies too – even better, ice them! Pretty good stuff.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F, and grease and line a 9-inch diameter baking ring.

Cream together 175g/6.5oz very soft butter with 90g/3oz icing sugar and the zest of one lime. Use lemon or orange if you prefer. Beat until very pale and fluffy. Beat in two egg yolks one at a time until incorporated. Whisk in 80g/2.5oz almond meal, then 125g/4oz all-purpose/plain flour in a few additions. After adding in the flour whisk at the highest speed for 10 seconds. Spread the dough in the pan to about 1cm thickness, if you have any dough leftover, you can make more mini tarts, or cookies, or heck, just eat the batter.

Bake for 12 or so minutes – the pastry should ultimately come out a lovely golden brown. Don’t worry if it still seems to be a bit soft when you remove it from the oven, it hardens up as it cools. Speaking of which, let it do so for 10 minutes before removing it from the pan.

Once it’s at room temperature, slather it in pastry cream and arrange or pile up some strawbs.

That day my mom and I had bought some mini Le Creuset casserole dishes as a ‘Welcome to our new home’ present to ourselves. How cute are they!?

And as I had some extra dough I made a couple ‘me’ sized tarts in them. Yum.