One of my favorite desserts is a nice, colorful fruit tart. And lately, I’ve been bingeing Masterchef shows from the US, Canada, and Australia. Along the way, I built up enough motivation to try to make a fruit tart. Actually, tartlet, because I don’t have a 9-inch tart pan. I used the tart recipe from a French baking book (all tart recipes are generally the same, so a Google search would pop up dozens of recipes) as are the pastry cream recipes.
The pastry cream gave me the most trouble. I followed the recipe and got this thick, bright yellow globby concoction, which looked all wrong to me. Then Mom came to help me and she got the same results! So we refrigerated the second result and the next day I whipped some heavy cream to mix the globby stuff in. Of course, it just gave me whipped cream with yellow clumps, so I took the hand blender and manually blended the mess.
You guys, it worked. Not only that, after I blended it and left it out on the counter while the crusts baked, it got smoother and creamier. In the end, I got my pastry cream. However, I know that there must be an easier way to make pastry cream than the way I did it, but I didn’t have enough eggs.
In the future, I think I’d want to make a more lemony-tasting pastry cream to contrast the strawberries (which we picked at a local farm; the eggs used were from my sister’s chickens, so they were also local). I’d also like to make multi-fruit tarts with a clear glaze as well as chocolatey tarts for Rob (who doesn’t like fruit or nuts, only chocolate). And instead of using rice, I bought some pie weights for next time.
Awkward Turtle 