More baking! Mastering a tart

I have an ambivalent relationship with pastry: I love eating it, but get very nervous making it. A couple of weeks ago I found a long-lost recipe for apple tart, and decided I'd use it for a dessert I was taking to dinner with friends. It was a great success, because it tasted terrific (filling recipe another time) and the texture of the pastry was very good - light, crisp and cuttable. BUT the tart case didn't look great, with the edges fallen away altogether in places and crumbly in others, plus it was a bit over-baked around the edges.

One other problem: the recipes all seem to be for a relatively small 23 cm tart tin, and that really isn't big enough for six to eight people. My tin is 28 cm. So I have to juggle the recipes a bit to fit.
     This week, wanting a lemon tart for dinner here, and determined to do better, I had another go. I consulted various authors, tweaked the recipe a bit, worked out how not to over-bake the edges, and hey presto - it worked. A bit of shrinkage (despite leaving it in the fridge before baking) and one small dip in one side, but otherwise - much better. The filling was very easy and worked well, though I reduced the original sugar a little - I like it a bit more lemony. And now you lucky people can have the benefit of all this mucking around.

Lemon tart
(After Mary Berry - she gives excellent handling tips - with tweaks from Dean Brettschneider)

A 28 cm, loose-bottomed, fluted tart tin

Baking paper, foil, ceramic baking beans or dried beans

Cream for whipping and serving with the tart

Pastry

350g plain flour

200g cold butter cut into small pieces
50g icing sugar

Pinch of salt

2 free-range egg yolks
2 Tbsps cold water (ice water is good)

Put the flour, butter, icing sugar and pinch of salt into a food processor. Pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the egg yolks and 1 Tbsp water. Pulse again until the mixture comes together into one big clump, adding more water if necessary. (It never clumps in my processor. I need to gather a handful up and press it together to see if it’s ready. If not, I add a tiny bit more water and process again.)

Knead the pastry for just two or three times to make it smooth. Wrap the lump in clingfilm and chill it in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.

Lay a piece of baking paper (I need two overlapping pieces, as it isn’t wide enough) on the work surface. Remove the base from the tart tin and lay it on the paper. Using a pencil, draw a circle onto the paper 4 cm bigger than the tin base. (Once you get used to making this you don’t really need to draw the circle, you can guess.)

Dust the base of the tin with flour. Take the pastry out of the fridge and remove the clingfilm. If it’s very firm, leave it to dechill for a few minutes.

For a 28 cm tin, take two-thirds of it, round into a new ball and place in the centre of the tin base, sitting on the paper. Flatten it out slightly. 

Roll out the pastry, still on the base and paper, so that it reaches evenly out about 4 cm all around the base (to the circle if you've drawn one). As you are rolling out, turn the pastry by turning the paper. 

Gently fold the pastry surrounding the tin base in towards the centre. Carefully lift the tin base off the work surface, drop it into the tin, then ease the pastry into the corners and up the sides of the tin, leaving a little overhang on the rim and then gathering it up to form a firm edge which rises a little all around above the top of the fluting. If the pastry cracks anywhere, press it together to seal. (If necessary you can grab a little bit more from the rest of the original ball to fill any awkward bits. Then put the leftover lump back into clingfilm and freeze for later use, such as little mince pies.)

With a sharp knife, trip off the edge all round to form a neat flat top edge. Lightly prick the base with a fork, but not quite all the way through. Place the pastry-lined tin in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 170C fan bake (or 190C without the fan). Line the pastry case with a rough circle of foil, dull side up, sticking up all around the fluted sides and hanging over the top edge a little. Fill with ceramic baking beads or dried beans.

Bake blind for 12-15 minutes, until the pastry is set, then lift out the tin and remove the foil with the beans in it. Put the tin back and bake for another 5-10 minutes (watch it very carefully) until the case is pale golden and completely dry. Leave aside to cool as you make the filling. Reduce the oven temperature to 150C fan-bake (160C without fan).

Filling

5 large free-range eggs                                    
150ml cream (half a small 300ml bottle)                             
200g caster sugar
4 large lemons, zested and juiced:
     150ml of lemon juice

      2 Tbsps zest
Icing sugar, for dusting (optional)

Fruit for decoration (optional) – strawberries, raspberries, thin slices of lemon glazed in sugar syrup

Break the eggs into a large bowl and whisk together with a wire whisk. Add cream, sugar and lemon juice. Beat together well. Stir in the zest. 

Pour filling into jug and fill cooled tart case, but not quite full. Pt tart into the oven and finish filling it when it is safely inside. (This can be a bit tricky - you may well need a smaller jug to do this last bit - but it does avoid any spills getting the tart into the oven.)

Bake until filling is just set – 30-35 minutes.

Take out tart and leave to cool until pastry comes away from the sides of the tin. 

To remove the tart from the tin, place the base of the tin on an upturned bowl and let the outer ring fall to the bench. 

Place the tart on a serving plate and serve warm or cold, dusted and/or decorated as you wish – or not, plain is fine.  (In my case I always leave it on the base, it's too nerve-racking to try removing it – you may be braver. If it is still on the base, put a paper napkin or piece of paper towel under the tart on the serving plate to prevent a sudden dramatic slide as you carry it to the table.)

Well, it wouldn't win any A & P show prizes, but you must admit it was a much better effort than before. Most importantly, it tasted wonderful.

A new take on tart

I didn't waste any time putting my pastry lessons into practice, because soon after, five Wellington food bloggers came to my place for a pot luck Sunday lunch.  Heather brought me this fragrant basket of herbs and lemons from her garden and her own grapefruit marmalade.

The day before, I girded my loins and set about making my own short pastry BY HAND, using Dean Brettschneider's recipe from his terrific new book, Pie (Penguin Books). I took the precaution of buying a commercial packet too, just in case it didn't work - but it did, so well I was incredibly pleased with myself. (One thing did go wrong, but I'll come to that.) And though it took time, it was not difficult.

Basic short pastry 
(pâte brisée)
(My comments are in italics.)

160g standard plan flour
120g butter
good pinch of salt
50ml cold water

Put an ice cube into 50ml of water in a small Pyrex jug, let it melt, then pour out the excess.
The butter should be chilled but not hard. Cut it up into little dice.
Place flour, butter and salt in a large mixing bowl. Using your fingertips, gently rub these ingredients together until they resemble rough breadcrumbs. Do not overmix, otherwise the butter will begin to melt from the heat of your fingers.

Add water and mix until a dough is formed.
(This is a bit unclear - I needed to add enough water so that the crumbs stuck lightly together, put it on the bench then gather it up lightly into a ball of dough.)
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for (at least) 30 minutes or overnight.
Gently rework pasty before using, taking care to ensure it remains cold and firm.
On a lightly floured surface, roll out pastry into a sheet about 3mm thick, or as stated in your recipe.

When I rolled it out, the pastry was surprisingly resilient - it didn't crumble or tear easily as I thought short pastry would - so I was a bit worried. I had the oven on ready, so I baked a bit of trimming first as a trail, and was hugely reassured when it came out beautifully light and crisp.





I went ahead and blind baked an oblong tart case using a Swiss roll tin (see previous post for blind baking) and put it carefully away in an airtight box to be filled and baked again in the morning.
Everything worked, EXCEPT that my carefully pressed in sides, sticking up just a little as Sebastien showed us, shrank down. I worked out that I shouldn't have used the fan in the oven - straight "bake" would have been better. Fortunately I put in a shallow filling, so it didn't matter.

For the filling, I adapted the Harriet Harcourt recipe I've already written about here. She doesn't say to blind bake the case first, but I think it works well to do that if there's time. On top of the grainy mustard, instead of potatoes and brie, I spread bits of the roasted garlic I'd made the day before when I baked the case. (You trim the top off a head of garlic, drizzle a bit of olive oil over it, wrap it in foil and leave it in a 200C  oven for 45 minutes, then squeeze out the soft garlic inside - very satisfying.) Then I crumbled over bits of goat's cheese...

....and topped it all with the thyme and the  mixture of eggs and creme fraiche in the original recipe.

With a green salad and French bread, it went down very well. Then we moved on to Lucy's cheeses. with honey and hazelnuts ...

 ...and the four French desserts (sorry, I snapped only three of them - there were also chocolate eclairs!). Of course, we had to sample them all, but there were no complaints about this (as if). I laughed more than I have for ages, it was merveilleuse. Merci!