Feeling tartish

Tarts are probably one of the easiest item to bake and yet one of the toughest to master and get right. Tart dough is a little like a sensitive person - one that you have to handle delicately because it is so fragile, before and after baking.

And getting the tart dough correct is just half of the story because the filling either makes or breaks the tart. And so a tart is actually like a sensitive person who is vain too, because you need to dress up the tart shell with something that looks tasty too.

More challenging also is that you need to pair the type of tart pastry correctly to the filling. So a tart is more like a sensitive and vain person who is also picky. And you have so many to choose from. There is shortcrust pastry, rich shortcrust pastry, cream cheese pastry, pate sucree, pate brisee, pate frolee, pate sable or pate a pate. And from these basic pastries you can add unlimited types of flavouring and nuts.

I decided to make the famous Pierre Herme's lemon tart and a chocolate ganache tart last weekend for a thanksgiving dinner. The lemon custard for this tart is incredibly rich as it uses a lot of butter. But because of that, it also melts in your mouth. The original recipe is incredibly tart (sour) because of the lemon but it is a good counterpoint to a rich meal. The tart base is made from a shortcrust pastry but mixed with toasted almond flour. I thought it would be a shame to cover the gorgeous yellow colour with icing sugar, so I did a simple design that allows some of the yellow custard to peek through.


The chocolate is an incredibly rich tart as well. It is a Rich Shortcrust Pastry filled with ganache made from a 65% Valrhona dark chocolate. The filling is layered to provide a contrast as you bite into the tart. There is a ganduja feulletine layer topped with orange peel and then with the ganache. I decided not to use a chocolate tart shell because I think that would be just a little too much chocolate.

Now I really like to make my tarts small, bite-size. But I am lazy too.