Steemit Iron Chef 2018 Act 02 #11 : Fruit and egg cream tart

This week I did not think at all about what to make. I knew! When I was little, there were these amazing fruit and egg cream tartlets everywhere. In each bakery, school, store, you could purchase a simple tart that tasted divine. Most of the time. Of course, I have gotten some bad apples over the years as some of the fruits I tried had already started going sour, but most of the time these tarts were perfectly delicious.

They were also glazed with a protective gelatin layer to keep the fruits from browning or drying out but today I did not make that protective layer as we are leaving in the evening, to stay at my boyfriend's sisters house and then go to France for a wonderful wedding of a fellow steemian. Because of all of these things happening, our tarts need to be eaten today and so I decided to skip that top layer.

This is a surprisingly easy recipe to make and you can use any fruits you like for the top of your tart. Back at home we always used canned peaches in their own juice so I got some for today as well. It takes around an hour to hour and a half to make and if you have tart forms, there will probably be enough batter for 10 to 12 tarts. As I was improvising and winging it with smaller paper forms for muffins, mine were smaller and I ended up making 18 tartlets in total.

As with most desserts, I did not use my own recipe rather than taking heavy inspiration from this page here. Yes, it is in Latvian so I will translate the directions for you, in English. Also, I will elaborate a little more.

Here is the Iron Chef contest

Ingredients

For tart

250 g flour
125 g butter
60 g brown sugar
1 egg
a dash of salt

For the egg cream

300 ml milk
3 egg yellows
2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar
60 g brown sugar
2 teaspoons with a good top of flour
2 teaspoons with a big top of potato flour(starch)

Fruits for garnishing, for example, and in my case: canned peaches, raspberries, blueberries, plums.

One thing that the original author did great is measure how much egg filling is needed for all of the tarts. I did not run short of it and I did not have any extra left either!

Also, I switched normal sugar to brown sugar and used 20 g more than in the original recipe as I wanted it to be a little sweeter.

For the tart

Sift flour into a bowl and add all the ingredients to it. The butter should be soft so everything mixes well together.

Mix with hands, until all the ingredients have bonded together. Make the batter into a ball. It will be buttery.

Cover the bowl so the batter does not get dry and put it in the fridge for around 30 minutes

If you are improvising like I was, take muffin forms and cut off around half of the sides. Do not cut off too much as the batter will rise a tiny bit while in the oven and you will need those walls to keep the egg cream. I would suggest leaving around 1,5 to 2 cm on the paper forms or filling silicone forms to the middle if you use these.

For the egg cream (while the batter is in the fridge)

Pour milk, vanilla sugar, brown sugar, and egg yellows in a small pot.

Turn on the heat to a happy medium but reduce it when the milk gets warm. Stir at all times, you do not want to boil your egg yellows!

When the milk is warm, add in the potato flour and continue mixing until it has dissolved. Then add the flour and, again, continue mixing until the flour has dissolved.

Stir until the mixture becomes thick, from 5 to 10 minutes. Then switch off the heat and put the pot on the side. Keep an eye on it as it should become even thicker and will develop a top layer if not mixed. Stir it over every couple of 2 minutes until cooled down.

The tart (again)

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and take out the batter from the fridge.

Take your forms. There is no need to butter or oil them as the batter itself has a lot of butter in it and will not stick to the paper.

Roll small balls from your batter then squish them into discs and make the middle thinner (it will raise in the oven leaving less space for the egg cream). Push into forms and roll up the batter to the edges of the form.

Repeat this until you have no more batter, then put the filled forms in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until light brown.

Yes, my tarts came out not to be as sexy as tarts should, but they are still beautiful and great for eating. If you want and need those flawless tarts, you will have to find a store that has metal forms. Unfortunately, our supermarket only had 12 cm tart forms and these were way too big for my standards.

A welcome upside is that you will probably not even see the tart as it will be filled and garnished, and the taste compensates for the looks.

Moving on, to filling!

When your tarts are ready, take them out of the oven, out of the forms and on a towel, to cool. By now, your egg cream will have cooled down as well.

After around 15 minutes, start filling the tarts with the egg cream. As my tarts were small, I used 1 full teaspoon on a tart, to fill it up to a brim.

The cream will be thick by now and will not go over the tiny ledges. It should stay in the tarts without a problem.

Now, all that is left is garnishing. Use any fruits of your desire. Seasonal fruits are very welcome. As you can see I used mine in different combinations and got everything but plums from the store.

As you might know, I do not have a garden right now so we do not have any fruits at home but we did manage to pick up some plums while I was skating two days earlier.

And, that is all. I would suggest using a good dash of salt as it gives a nice taste to the tart. But, of course, be careful to not oversalt it.

Also, this is very easy to make and tastes amazing. Especially with that egg cream in the middle. :)

Also, I made the tag before my boyfriend surprised me by going to the store and bringing raspberries and blueberries! Now the tag looks just like another of the tarts! Even if the red berries were meant to be strawberries in the drawing :D

Have a great day! Today, tomorrow, and forever.
Linda