Tarte aux Fruits Fraiches - Fresh Fruit Tarts

The tartlettes above were made with the same pate sucree dough that we used for our apple tart. Today we learned how to make Pate Brisee which is used for the tart in the bottom picture. Pate Brisee is a flaky tart dough that is made by cutting cold butter into cake flour, salt, and sugar until the butter pieces are the size of lentils. This procedure is called sablage after the French verb "sabler meaning, "to make sandy". Then a well is formed and cold water is added and combined being careful not to over work the dough. Remove walnut size pieces from the dough and crush them against the work surface with the heel of your palm. This procedure is called fraisage. Gather all the pieces of dough together, cover with pastic, and refrigerate to chill the butter and relax the gluten. The butter chunks in this dough is what causes the flakiness in the crust.

The tart shells are blind baked since this tart doesn't get baked after the filling and fruit is added. We made pastry cream as the filling. Pastry cream kicks *ass! It is made by heating milk, scraped vanilla bean, and half of the sugar. Once this comes to a slight bowl whisk one third of the hot liquid into eggs, egg yolks, pastry cream powder and the rest of the sugar. This is called tempering. Add the tempered mixture to the remaining milk in saucepan. Bring the liquid to a boil while constantly stirring. If you stop stirring you will get lumps! Boil for 2 minutes to get the raw taste of pastry cream powder out and to ensure proper thickness. Cool over icebath.

The tarts are filled with pastry cream and then fresh fruit is arranged on top with a little apricot nappage. Refrigerate to chill. Oh man this tart is the perfect summertime tart with any fresh fruit that is in season!