Noble Strawberry Tartlets
Short-crust pastry tartlets with braised local strawberries with a noble touch inspired by the Knights of Malta
Equipment
- Sugar Thermometer
- Food Processor
- Weighing Scale
- Rolling Pin
- Individual Tart Tins (with loose base)
- Circular Cutter (2cm wider in diameter than the tart tins)
- Cookie Cutter (shape of Maltese Cross)
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry
- 500 grams Flour
- 250 grams Butter (unsalted)
- 175 grams Icing Sugar
- 1 Tsp Salt
- 1 Lemon (zest only)
- 1 Egg
- 1 Tbsp Water (optional)
For the strawberry filling
- 300 grams Strawberries
- 100 grams Sugar
- 1 Lemon (juice only)
- 1 Sprig Mint (finely chopped)
Instructions
To make the short crust pastry
- Put the flour, icing sugar, butter and lemon zest in a food processor. Blend until the butter has combined with the dry ingredients.
- Add the eggs and continue blending. If you feel the dough is still sandy then add in the water to help it come together. You don't want a sticky dough though.
- Collect the pastry dough into a ball, dust with flour, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 45 minutes to 1 hour.
To make the strawberry filling
- Thoroughly wash the strawberries and leave to drain in a colander.
- Snip off the green tops and quarter the strawberries.
- Add to a heavy-bottom pot with the sugar and lemon juice and boil on your oven top.It is essential to use a tall pot because once the sugar mixture boils it can easily double or triple in size and the last thing you want is for the syrup to spill on your oven top.
- Once the strawberries boil, or reach not more than 80°C, then take off the heat and leave to cool.A common mistake is to overcook the fruit. This makes the jam darker and we lose the vibrant red colour of the strawberries. Therefore a sugar thermometer comes in handy to let you know the exact point to stop cooking.
- Fold in the chopped mint.
- At this stage you can opt to liquidise the fruit filling. We prefer not to as the tart looks more rustic with a slightly chunky filling. Much better than guests thinking that the fruit filling came out of a tin.
To assemble and bake the tartlets
- Pre-heat your oven at 180°C.
- Butter and flour the tartlet tins and refrigerate.
- Take half of the shortcrust pastry from the fridge, dust with flour and place between two sheets of baking paper. With a rolling pin open evenly roll out the dough to around 3mm thickness.
- With a large circular cutter, cut the dough and place each disc in one of the tartlet tins. Gently tuck into the bottom edges to shape the tart shell. Poke the bottom of the dough with a fork and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
- With the remaining shortcrust pastry repeat the step above to roll out the dough evenly to approximately 3mm. Use the Maltese Cross cookie cutter to cut your shapes. You will have to roll up the dough and repeat this step until you cut out enough Maltese Crosses to top your tartlets.Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.With the extra handling you might end up warming up the dough which will eventually make it more difficult to handle. If this is the case refrigerate the dough again until firm enough to continue.
- Fill the tartlet shells with baking beads and bake in the oven for 15 minutes, or until slightly brown on the edges. Also bake the Maltese Crosses for not more than 10 minutes.
- After baking the tartlet shells, fill with the strawberry filling. Do not fill the tart shells to the top because in the oven the filling will bubble and spill and bake for another 10 minutes.Leave the Maltese crosses out to cool
- Remove the strawberry tarts from the oven and leave to cool. Once cool, place the Maltese Cross on each tartlet.
- Keep in an airtight container before serving. Sprinkle with icing sugar when serving.
