Fresh fruit tart revisited

It's been a long time since I've made a fruit tart, because you have to plan ahead for the crust and for the pastry cream.  (Also, my fridge is small and once you put in an 8" tart, a bowl of pastry cream and the fruit for the topping, there's no room left!) The plus side of making a fruit tart is that there's virtually no work to do on the day of serving except assembly work: just scrape the cream into the tart and pile the fruit on top. It's the perfect make-ahead summer dessert. 

For a friend's birthday, I decided to revisit the fresh fruit tart that I made a couple of years ago. This time, I used different recipes than in my previous post. Jon brought back his copy of Jacques Pépin's Complete Techniques from the US, and I gave Pépin's pâté sucrée (tart dough) and crème pâtissière (pastry cream) recipes a whirl. 

Verdict: 

The crust was rich, sweet and crumbly, yet still was sturdy enough to hold both the filling and to travel (hand-delivered in a box) across town by train! I would make the pâté sucrée again but would reduce the amount of sugar, and perhaps play with the flour amount by adding some almond flour. 

The crème pâtissière was far too sweet for my liking. I would reduce the amount of sugar by half but otherwise, this recipe was a keeper. I threw in some Cointreau and lemon zest in, too. Despite its name, pastry cream is really just a thick custard - no cream involved (unless you substitute some of the milk for cream).

Here's the separate parts of the tart, all ready for assembly: pastry cream, chocolate tart and fruit. 

I melted some chocolate the day before, spread it over the tart, and let it cool. The chocolate layer helps prevent the fruit and cream from turning the crust soggy. If you don't like chocolate (!) you can brush the tart with a thick layer of eggwash during the last 10 minutes of baking instead - that will also waterproof your tart crust.

Fresh fruit waiting to be assembled. 

This is the fun part. I'm not very artistic, so I just arranged the fruit in a roughly circular pattern. 

The finished product. Chill until ready to be served. It only lasts about 1 day before the crust gets too soggy (even with the chocolate barrier), so eat this tart right away!

Hot cross buns with boozy raisins

Although I'm not Christian, seven years of living in the UK and going to an Anglican church has left me with a fondness of some of the cultural traditions celebrated there (mostly food related!): Shrove Tuesday (better known as Pancake Day), Christmas (with its lovely roast chicken and bread sauce), and of course, Easter. Easter's not just about chocolate bunnies and Cadbury Creme eggs. It's also about hot cross buns: a lightly spiced, sweet bun with a sticky sugar glaze.

It's not yet Easter (technically it's still Lent so I really shouldn't be indulging with such rich food as butter and spices, but oh well), but I decided to make hot cross buns today.

One of my favorite British recipe websites is Really Nice Recipes, a wonderful and carefully curated selection of recipes. The site design is very user-friendly, and all the recipes that I've tried thus far from this site have worked. Not one dud so far!



I used the hot cross bun recipe from this site, but added in a few tweaks of my own:

1. Instead of 190g strong/bread flour, I used 140g bread flour + 30g rye flour + 20g sourdough starter. 
2. I soaked the raisins overnight in a mixture of dark rum, Cointreau and a splash of Rogue Hazelnut Nectar brown ale before proceeding with the recipe. Very naughty! :)