Alberto’s Fruit Tart

Men in the kitchen, a pleasant surprise of our generation. My grandmother was used to say that men in the kitchen are only messing around and delaying the dinner to be ready. AHHAHA, I’d like to tell her that she was wrong, there are always exceptions, above all in the 21st century 🙂

I know a couple of Davide’s friends very fond of cooking, I met husband’s friend who can prepare a fancy dinner in 1 hour and I have a friend who accepted the proposal to write a post because “Come on, Alberto! Your cakes look wonderful, taste amazing and you’re for sure better than  me at writing!”. Lucky you if you can have a bite of his cakes, and if you can’t, I  stole for you the recipe. So here you go his post.

Okidoki, it’s autumn already: time to become a star on the Olga’s blog 🙂

Olghita told me that the recipe of my apple pie with amaretto biscuits was a success on the blog, so I would propose another cake that is versatile and very easy to make. You can modify some of the ingredients in order to add your flavor. For instance, you can add lemon zest to the creme pat instead of using vanilla or you can cocoa to the crust and only use strawberries on the top. Be creative! And now…roll up your sleeves and let’s have fun!

Ingredients:

Crust:

  • wheat flour 250 gr
  • butter 135 gr
  • 3 egg yolks
  • icing sugar 100 gr
  • zest of 1 lemon

Filling:

  • caster sugar 100 g
  • wheat flour or corn starch 50 gr
  • 500 ml whole milk
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 1/2 vanilla bean scraped (or one teaspoon of vanilla extract).

Topping:

  • fruits

Optional glossing:

  • peach jam 150 gr+ 2 tbsp of water

 

Instructions:

Filling: beat the 4 egg yolks with 100 g of caster sugar (you can save the egg whites for other recipes) and add the 50 g of corn starch and make sure that there are no lumps. Lightly pour the 500 ml of whole milk and whisk it until it foams. Add the vanilla extract or the seeds of half of a vanilla bean. Transfer on the stove on low-medium heat until it lightly boils and thickens. Let the filling cool down for about one hour.

Crust:

Add the 135 gr of cold butter (sliced in cubes) to the 250 gr of wheat flour. Add in the 3 egg yolks, the 100 gr of icing sugar and the lemon zest. Don’t worry if the pastry is quite crumbly at this stage. If you have faith, everything will be fine in the end. Quickly work them together with your hands until you get a pastry dough. Once done wrap the dough in plastic film and chill for 30 minutes. This resting stage is essential as it won’t shrink while cooking.

Remove the dough from the fridge. Place it on a lightly floured surface and with a rolling pin, roll it to a 5 mm thickness. Let’s proceed to the blind-backing: transfer to a greased/floured 24 cm tart pan and bake it for 35-40 minutes in the over preheated at 180 C degrees (350 F). Don’t forget to add something on the pastry while it’s in the oven, otherwise it will form air bubbles on its surface. You can use dry beans, rice, dry lentils or if you’re feeling cool, you can go for the backing ceramic beans on the baking parchment laid on the pastry.

After 35-40 minutes, easily remove the beans with the help of the backing parchment and let the pastry cool off.

When the pastry is at room temperature, fill it with the creme pat and decore with the fruits that you like (but please harmoniously).

Optional glossing: put the jam in a pan on medium heat, add two tablespoon of water and let it simmer for few seconds and then sieve it and let it cools down before distributing it on the fruits with the help of a clocking brush.

Put the tart in the fridge for about 30 minutes before serving.

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