Fruit Tarts
These little fruit tarts are made from shortcrust pastry & can be filled with jewel-coloured, seasonal fruits.
Prep Time:
30 minutes plus chilling
Cook Time:
15 to 18 minutes
Makes:
8 tarts
Not Suitable for Freezing
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Ingredients
For the Tart Casings:
- 170 g plain flour plus extra for dusting
- large pinch of salt
- 110 g cold unsalted butter
- 3 tbsp icing sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp cold water
- 2 to 3 drops of vanilla extract
For the Filling:
- 100 g marscarpone cheese
- 100 ml double cream or 100g creme fraiche
- 1 tbsp icing sugar
- 2 to 3 drops vanilla extract
- approg 250 g assorted fresh fruit
- 8 x 9 cm pie dishes
Method
- To make the pastry, stir together the flour and salt, then rub in the butter until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
- Stir in the icing sugar.
- Whisk the egg yolk with the water and vanilla.
- Add 2 tablespoons to the bowl and mix with a knife. The pastry should stick together, if not, add more egg mixture a tsp at a time. Form into a ball.
- Divide the disc into 8 roughly equal pieces and shape into flat balls.
- Wrap each piece in clingfilm and chill the pastry for 30 minutes.
- Lightly dust a surface and your rolling pin with flour. Then roll out each piece of chilled pastry to around 3mm thick. It should be just a little bigger than the tin.
- Use the pastry to line the tart tins. Don’t worry if you make a hole – simply squash a bit of spare pastry over the gap.
- Preheat the oven to 180c/350f/Gas mark 4.
- Trim off the excess pastry. Chill the cases for 10 minutes, then prick the bottoms with a fork.
- Put on a baking sheet and bake for 15 – 18 minutes until golden brown.
- Take the cases out of the oven and leave to cool in the tins for 20 minutes, then remove from the tins and transfer to a wire rack.
- For the filling, whisk together the mascarpone, cream or creme fraiche , sugar and vanilla until slightly thickened.
- Spoon the filling into the pastry cases until they are about half full. Top with different types of fresh fruit. Try mixed berries – blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, kiwi fruit and green grapes etc.
- Dust with icing sugar just before serving.
