Frank's Recipes! Fruit Tart with Pastry Cream

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Fruit Tart with Pastry Cream

Rich Tart Crust
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
10 tablespoons butter, cold, unsalted
2 egg yolks
3 tablespoons ice water

Pastry Cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 pinch salt
2 eggs
2 cups half and half
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter, unsalted

Fruit Topping
1 pint strawberries, sliced
3 kiwi fruit, peeled and sliced
1 can mandarin oranges, drained
1/2 cup apricot preserves (optional), strained
1 tablespoon water (optional)

Combine flour, salt and sugar in the container of a food processor; pulse once or twice. Add butter and process about 10 seconds. Add egg yolks and process a few seconds more. Or, mix the crust in your preferred way.

Place the mixture in a bowl, and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of ice water. Using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, gradually mix, gathering the mixture into a ball when it is mixed enough to do so. Wrap in plastic wrap, flatten into a disk and refrigerate for 30 minutes. You can make the pastry cream while the dough is chilling.

When chilled, flour a surface and roll the dough out to fit a 10 inch tart pan, pressing the dough firmly into the edges, bottom and sides of pan.

Prick the crust all over with a fork. Line it with foil and weight the bottom with pie weights. Bake at 425 for 12 minutes, remove the foil and weights, lower temperature to 350 and bake another 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove and cool on a rack.

In a small saucepan, combine sugar, flour, cornstarch and salt. Mix eggs with half and half. Stir the egg mixture into the sugar mixture over medium heat. Whisk almost constantly until mixture boils and thickens. Continue to cook until mixture coats the back of a spoon. When you draw your finger through the coating, the resulting line should hold its shape. Stir in butter and vanilla. Cool, then cover directly with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate the pastry cream unless assembling the tart right away.

I like to put this tart together when everything is quite cool to avoid moisture and condensation, but if serving right away this isn't necessary.

When tart crust and pastry cream are cool, assemble tart. Spread the pastry cream over the tart crust. You may have a little left over. The cook gets to eat this. Dry the fruit well. Arrange strawberries in a double row around outer edge of tart, pointed end up, cut edge showing. Arrange kiwi in the next circle. Arrange a couple of rows of mandarin orange slices in the next circle. Leave enough room for a whole strawberry in the center.

If you would like to glaze the tart, warm the strained preserves with the water in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Brush the tops of the fruit with this mixture.