Previously, I never understood the real desire to make a tart when you could easily make it be a pie instead. Pie > Tart; Or so I thought.
The first tart I ever made was a raspberry tart with a crumble topping for my bestie Jess' 25th birthday. It was splendiferous, made from fresh raspberries that I'd picked late that summer. So when my buddy Lesley came and stayed with me, bringing a bag of fresh wild strawberries she'd picked, the call for tart echoed softly in my brain. (-taaaart taaaaart taaaaart-)
Wild Strawberry Chocolate Tart
Chocolate Press-in Pastry:
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 cups cocoa powder
2 TBSP sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter (cold)
1/4 cup margarine (cold)
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vinegar
- Oil and flour a ~9 inch tart pan. Set aside.
- Combine flour through salt in a bowl. Stir together.
- Add cold butter and margarine. Using a pastry blender or fork, cut butter and margarine into dry ingredients until smaller that pea sized lumps remain.
- In a cup, add egg yolk and vinegar. Using a fork, whisk egg and vinegar together. Pour liquid over tart mixture and stir to combine.
- Form pastry into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- On a floured surface, roll out pastry to ~1 cm thick. The pastry is Very Soft. It will tear when you go to move it to the tart pan. That's ok. Just pat the pieces together. (Also, start pre-heating the oven to 375'.)
- Pat the pastry evenly into the tart shell. (If you kept the separated egg white around from the egg that was used, brush it onto the surface of the pastry.)
Strawberry Filling:
2 cups wild strawberries, headed and sliced
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1 TBSP flour
- Combine all filling ingredients together in a bowl. Stir together.
- Pour filling into prepared tart shell.
- Bake at 375' for about 40 minutes.
While I think I will always have a preference for pie, tarts will now have their place seated at the what-to-do-with-fresh-berries table in the Conference Hall A of my brain.
-Andrea
The Half-Assed Hobbyist