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!

Raspberry panna cotta

Panna cotta (Italian for "cooked cream") is one of my favourite desserts - lighter than a crême brulée, yet still creamy and milky-rich in your mouth.  Basically it is an Italian-style milk custard jelly, yet it's so hard to find good panna cotta when eating out as most places make their panna cotta too firm. Great panna cotta should be wobbly and soft, with a very luxurious and yielding mouthfeel, it should be rich yet light at the same time. Too often when eating out you get panna cotta that's nothing more than milky Jell-O, and that's just not good.

I've recently purchased a copy of the BBC Good Food Cookbook; it's got some interesting ideas for different dishes which I plan to test soon. This is the first recipe I've made from this dish (albeit with some major alterations/improvisations due to not having double cream or lemons and having leftover sour cream at home)*. I haven't made jelly in a long time; I think the last time was making Jell-O gummy worm vodka shots several years ago for a X'mas party (long story, don't ask!).

*The original Good Food Cookbook recipe was for lemon pannacotta with blackberries.This is a simple vanilla panna cotta with raspberry/blueberry topping.