HYDE PARK, N.Y. — What would summer be without fresh, vine-ripened strawberries? Their unmistakable fragrance and sweet, juicy flesh help make it a magical season.
Sure, they’re good eaten straight from the patch. But for a special-occasion treat, try a presentation that’s still simple to do, but has a certain flair and a quite glamorous appearance.
Slice a pint and arrange them on a crisp tart shell with velvety pastry cream and you’ll find you have created a combination of flavors and textures that can’t be beat. Easy to make and a pleasure to eat, the Culinary Institute of America’s strawberry cream tart is summer at its best.
The notion of making pastry dough from scratch can sometimes induce panic, but the CIA’s tart dough recipe is simple to master.
This kind of dough is known as short dough (French chefs call it pate sucree or pate sablee, “sugary” and “sandy” pastry) and it uses the creaming method, one of the easiest mixing techniques.
The creaming method produces a cookie-like pastry that can hold creamy fillings and custards without turning soggy. It is far more forgiving than the rubbed-dough method used to create flaky pie crusts. The creaming method can be done by hand or with a stand mixer using a paddle attachment. Just blend the butter and sugar until light and creamy, and add the remaining ingredients in sequence to produce a smooth dough.
Assembling a tart with precooked ingredients – as with this one using pastry cream and fresh strawberries – requires baking the crust in advance, a process referred to as blind baking or prebaking.
Kate Cavotti, associate professor in baking and pastry arts at the Culinary Institute of America, offers this advice:
“To blind bake a pastry shell, line the pan with the dough and poke holes in the bottom and sides of the pastry with a fork; this is known as ‘docking’ the dough. This keeps the pastry from puffing up as it bakes.
“Place the dough-lined tart pan in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so. Resting the dough in the refrigerator solidifies the butter and relaxes the gluten to prevent shrinkage during baking.
“Next, line the pastry with parchment paper or aluminum foil and fill the pan with pie weights, dried beans or uncooked rice.
The weights prevent the bottom of the crust from bubbling up and the sides from collapsing or sliding down during baking.
“Place the pan in a preheated oven and bake the pastry until the dough is just set and the edges look dry, about 10 minutes.
Remove the weights and the paper or foil and finish blind baking until the desired color is achieved.”
Gather the prepared components in advance – the pastry shell, pastry cream and strawberries – so the tart can be assembled in a few minutes and served immediately.
Brushing the crust with melted chocolate helps to keep it crisp.
However, even with the chocolate layer, the tart will lose its texture contrast if it sits for more than 12 hours before serving.
For the best results, serve fresh fruit tarts on the same day they are made.
This recipe, along with many other desserts, is from the “Baking At Home with The Culinary Institute of America” cookbook (Wiley, 2004, $40).
Strawberry Cream Tart
One recipe Tart Dough (recipe follows)
Ingredients
-
- 1/2 cup strawberry jam
- 1/4 cup melted chocolate (optional)
- 2 cups Pastry Cream (recipe follows)
- 2 pints fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
Directions
Heat the jam in a small saucepan over low heat until it is warm enough to strain through a fine-mesh sieve. Strain the jam into a small dish and keep warm.
If using chocolate to line the tart (to help keep it crisp), brush with the melted chocolate. Place the tart shell in the refrigerator so that the chocolate will harden. Remove from the refrigerator and spread the pastry cream in the tart shell in an even layer. Arrange the strawberries over the surface of the pastry cream.
Use a pastry brush to coat the strawberries very lightly with the warm jam. Let the glaze set for about 10 minutes in the refrigerator. If you are not serving the tart immediately, keep it covered and refrigerated for up to 12 hours.
Makes one 8-inch tart, 8 servings.
Nutrition information per 10-ounce serving, including chocolate: 559 cal., 5.5 g pro., 95 g carbo., 18 g fat, 42 mg sodium, 168 mg chol., 2 g fiber.
Tart Dough
Ingredients
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 1/2 cups cake flour, sifted, plus extra for dusting
Directions
To make Tart Dough: In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla extract on medium speed, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed, until smooth and light in color, about 2 minutes.
Add the egg yolk and blend until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes more.
Add the flour all at once, mixing on low speed until just blended, about 30 seconds. The dough will be very crumbly when you remove it from the mixer. Use a gentle touch to press the dough into a disk.
Wrap the dough tightly and refrigerate for 20 minutes before rolling.
Preheat the oven to 400° F. Roll out the dough and use it to line an 8-inch tart pan. Dock the dough, line it with parchment paper or foil, fill partially with pie weights, and fully blind bake the crust (as previously described). Cool to room temperature in the pan on a wire rack.
Pastry Cream
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 cups whole milk
- 4 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
- Pinch of salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Directions
To make Pastry Cream: Combine the cornstarch with 1/4 cup of the sugar in a mixing bowl, and then stir in 1/2 cup of the milk. Blend the yolks into the cornstarch mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon until smooth.
Prepare an ice-water bath by filling a roasting pan or large mixing bowl half full with water and ice; reserve for later use.
Combine the remaining 1 1/2 cups milk with the remaining 1/2 cup sugar and the salt in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil. Remove pan from heat.
Temper the egg mixture by gradually adding about 1/3 of the hot milk mixture, whisking constantly. Add the remaining milk mixture to the eggs. Return the mixture to the saucepan and continue cooking over medium heat, vigorously stirring with a whisk, until the mixture comes to a boil and the whisk leaves a trail in the pastry cream, 5 to 7 minutes. As soon as the pastry cream reaches this stage, remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract and the butter. Place a sheet of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming.
Transfer the pan to the ice water bath.
Stir occasionally until the pastry cream is cool, about 30 minutes.
Transfer the pastry cream to a covered storage container and refrigerate until needed, up to 3 days.
This recipe, along with many other desserts, is from the “Baking At Home with The Culinary Institute of America” cookbook (Wiley, 2004, $40), available at bookstores nationwide or at .
