I saw these for the first time in the window of a bakery in Cannes when I was about 8 years old, and I was hooked. The cute little tarte shells filled with rich, yellow pastry cream and succulent strawberries brushed with jam… and I knew that one day, I would try to recreate them. Strawberries were on sale for $4 for 2 lbs this week at Randalls- a ridiculously good deal- and were red, gorgeous, and juicy… it was like a sign! I knew that strawberry tartelettes would be next on the list.
I searched about for the perfect recipe- I wanted to make sure I was staying true to the French version of the tarte and not the Italian one (which often has no cream and added pistachios) and found a close match at Food & Wine (I have one of their annual books and keep meaning to try some things out of it.) I also used the same pastry dough recipe as for the banana tarte rather than that suggested in the F&W recipe (I made about 1.3x the recipe for the crust to allow for all 6 mini tartelettes).
Interesting tidbits from making these:
- I used some strawberry jam I got from the Austin Farmer’s Market to brush the strawberries (and keep them from drying out!). If you don’t have strawberry, any berry should be nice… and if you don’t have berry, then apricot is always an excellent go-to, although I think this is one of those rare cases where a berry jam would be best.
- I made 1.3x the tarte crust recipe to cover my 6 tartellete pans (rough 3inch size pans) and my sister and I agree that the slightly-overtly-thick crust is this tarte’s one fault. I’d suggest making the original amount, or juuuust slightly over.
- The recipe’s suggestion that you keep a bit of the tarte dough uncooked for fixing fault lines and cracks is a brilliant one. I perhaps kept a bit too much this time (as last time I kept too little!) but knowing that these would be heavy little things, I wanted to make sure their castle walls were well-reinforced. I’d say keeping a square centimeter per tarte seems fair.
- I ended up baking the shells for about 12 minutes, checking after 8, 10, 11, 12. At 8 minutes in, I noticed they were puffing up in the center, despite my having made fork-holes. To solve this, I opened the oven, and using a fork made deeper holes (tiny slits in the truly persistent ones) and pressed them back down. I’m sure there are more official ways of preventing this (pie weights or dried beans, etc) but this method is simple.
- I used all soy spread for this one in lieu of normal butter (Randall’s came out with their own whipped spread equivalent to earth balance, so I opted to try) and though the crust is slightly more crumbly and slightly more dry than last the, the added health benefits are totally worth the slight, slight difference. I highly recommend forgoing normal, actual butter for this when you honestly can barely tell the difference.
- I tried making strawberry slices and arranging them in a flower and it just looked awkward. Trust the recipe when it says to arrange them whole, in peaks… it’s true, it’ll look better. Also, if you’re like me and cut a hole (rather than just straight across) to conserve the most strawberry-meat possible, you may need to cut it straight after to ensure that the strawberry holds still!
- I used about 1/3 white whole wheat flour and 2/3 parts AP flour… I was afraid that using all WW flour would give the crust a grainy texture, but plan to work on this proportion in the future
- I also used organic cage-free (+ extra folic acid!) eggs and highly suggest that as well… they crack so much more nicely, are more fresh, and made for a delicious cream!
- I used organic skim milk in lieu of whole milk for the cream
- Rather than use heavy cream in the pastry cream, I substituted this for 2 tablespoons of organic low-fat vanilla yogurt and a tablespoon of potato starch to thicken… and you can’t tell the difference at all!
- I refrigerated the cream for the suggested 2 hours before filling, then refrigerated the filled shells for about 30 minutes, then added the strawberries and brushed them with the jam, and then refrigerated overnight. The first one was eaten after a good 8 hours of fridge time after they were completely put together. This really does allow the cream sufficient time to thicken and hold, and allows the jam to infuse the strawberries with its protective (and yummy) layer!
If anything, these just look adorable. The fact that they’re delicious is a very nice side benefit. :)
