Strawberry tart

  I love looking at pastries' pictures. When I find a nice new blog about baking, I can spend hours and hours just going through all the recipes (it's called "food porn" :) ). I have the same thing with cooking books. So once, finally, I bought an encyclopedia of baking, "Patisserie" by Christophe Felder and even if the pictures are splendid, I am really disappointed with the recipes. Sometimes they are not explained very well and a beginner will be lost.

  I decided, however, to do some "French stuff" and mix two recipes from this book: tart dough and light butter cream. The result is rather tasty but really sweet. Next time I would use lemon curd instead of butter cream.

Ingredients:

Tart dough:

120 g soft butter

60 g sugar

200 g flour

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

"Crème au beurre légère"

3 eggs

120 g + 120g + one tablespoon sugar

180 g soft butter

50g + 50 g water

+ strawberries (about 500 g)

  Combine butter and sugar using a spatula. Add the whole egg and continue mixing with the spatula.

Add flour, salt and vanilla extract, stir gently with the spatula till combined. 

Roll in a ball and wrap in plastic. Put to the fridge for 2 h.

Separate egg-whites and egg-yolks. Combine 50g water and 120g sugar in a small pot.

Put the pot over a high-heat and bring the sugar syrup to 118°C (control with a sugar thermometer). Meanwhile, whisk the egg whites on medium until they form soft peaks (do not over-beat them!). 

Increase the mixer's speed to the highest speed. Pour in the hot syrup in a smooth, steady stream. Continue to beat the meringue until cooled down (about 10 minutes).

Now, we will do almost the same thing with the yolks.

Combine 50g water and 120g sugar in a small pot. Put the pot over a high-heat and bring the sugar syrup to 118°C. Put the yolks into the mixing bowl and set the mixer's speed to the highest speed (no need to whisk them like the whites). Pour in the hot syrup in a smooth, steady stream.

Continue to beat the yolks for a few minutes. The mix will whiten.

Beat the soft butter in the mixing bowl.

Add the yolks to the butter and mix.

Add the meringue and mix on the lowest speed in order to incorporate a maximum of air.

(I changed two steps comparing with the original recipe: first of all, I added all the meringue and not only the half- the cream tasted too much butter for me. The second was to mix it with a whisk - my mixer doesn't work very well on the low speed.)

Here is the light butter cream (light because there is quite a lot of air in it, not because it is dietetic <definitely not! :) >).

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the dough in a pie plate (normally, you should roll it out, I don't have any roller docker so I stick small part of the dough with my fingers). Make some small holes with a fork.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

The tart should be a bit brownish.

Put the butter cream...

... and strawberries cut in half.

Bon appétit!