Fruit Tart

I haven't been cooking or baking much since i got myself involved with the menu designing project. Now that the menu is kind of done, I was in the mood to bake something! Just the other day while lunching at Vivo, I came across Fruits Paradise and saw their beautiful fruit tarts. They were $70 to $80 each!! OMG. Of course the ones i made didn't turn out as beautiful as their's but there were plenty of TLC in mine.

Without further ado, here's the recipe!

Tart Dough (enough for 2 x 7 inch mould AND 22 mini tarts)

370g unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon (90ml) milk, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk, at room temperature, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 ½ cups (500g) all-purpose flour

(The above is the actual recipe taken from somewhere i can't remember. But i added 1 whole egg and it was fine.)

Before 

1. Cream the butter on low speed until it turns white-ish. Takes less than 5 minutes.

After

2. At this stage, add all the other ingredients except flour. Mix for 1 minute.

After mixing in all the flour

 3. Add in the flour in 4 portions. Whisk slight after each addition until flour is more or less incorporated. It doesn't have to be incorporated completely. Over whisking the dough may result in tough dough! Don't be obsessed!

After using hand to gather the dough

4. Use your hand to gently gather the dough into a ball. Be sure to check the bottle of the bowl. There may be some butter that didn't get mixed together. Just scrap everything together.

Now you will be wondering how the hell you are going to use this sticky and wet dough for the pie mould! Read on!

5. Separate the dough into 2 bags. Keep in the fridge. If you want to work on the dough soon, keep in the freezer for 30 minutes. If you only want to work in it the next day, the chiller is fine. The purpose of putting the dough into the fridge is so that it will harden and be easier to handle.

You can freeze the dough for up to 2 weeks. Just thaw it to use.

Rolled out

 6. After chilling the dough, its time to roll it out. How do you tell if the dough is ready? It just has to be harder than before and easy to manage.

Roll out the dough to your desired thickness. I think 0.5 to 1cm is ok. Please flour your workstation and rolling pin generously.

I have to warn you about this dough. Because of the high butter content in it, the dough may break easily, especially if its not cold enough or it got warm. But not to worry. If any dough breaks, it's willing to be patched back as well.

 7. Sorry i missed out 1 pic intended to show you how to place the dough on the mould. It was too blur. Here's what you do. Grease the mould. Gently (yes everything you do must be gently cos' the dough breaks easily) roll the dough onto the rolling pin. Quickly use the rolling pin to unroll the dough onto the mould. Am i making sense? I hope so. Try searching youtube for help!
If you look at the pic, you can see there are some patch jobs. Yes my dough broke and i patched it. No issue!

After baking

 8. Next, use a fork to prick holes in the dough. This will prevent   the dough from raising too much while baking. Some recipes ask you to weight the dough down with beans or rice but i feel it is not necessary. Put the dough back into the freezer for 10 mins. Take this chance to heat up your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Baking the dough for 20-25 minutes till golden brown.

This picture is how my tart (yes, before baking i call it a dough, after baking it comes a tart!) looks like after baking.






Ok. So after everything, its time for assembling. I used the pastry cream from the cream puff recipe to fill up the tart. Here is the link - Pastry Cream. Or you can use whipped cream. It's up to you. I made some mini tarts as well. It's up to you which type of fruits you like. Just add it to the tart. Hope you'll try this recipe.

Mini tarts

Lynn's Tart

Blueberries & Grapes Tart