Annika's Baking Nook
By Annika Venegas
Fresh Fruit Tart
As we turn from winter to spring, the weather gets warmer and flowers begin to bloom. The array of colors outside make us all look forward to this beloved season of spring!
In this edition of The Tiger, I will be attempting to make a fruit tart. I thought a tart would be a perfect representation of the season changing to spring!
When I first thought of making a tart, I thought it would be a challenging dessert! However, it was not as difficult as I thought. Making the tart crust and pastry cream (custard) were not as bad as I expected. Nonetheless, this recipe took a lot of waiting and patience! There were many moments where I just had to wait for something to cool down or let it sit, which is a normal part of baking.
Even making the pastry cream was quite simple and straightforward. I thoroughly enjoyed using a video tutorial for a recipe this time because it helped me to know whether I was following the instructions correctly. I could compare what my pastry cream looked like to the recipe’s, which was very helpful. Even “tempering the eggs,” when mixing the hot milk with the eggs, was easy to follow.
The one part I did not like about this recipe was that it said it would yield two tarts. In the beginning, the recipe instructed to divide the dough into two to be able to make two tarts, however, I ended up not having enough dough the first time I was making the tarts so I had to take the dough from the second batch and use it for my first batch. The second tart did come out nice but parts of the crust started to fall apart due to there not being enough dough. I also think yielding two batches may not be useful for those who only want to make one tart. Of course, you can try to halve the ingredients, however, it might not turn out as well as you would want.
The taste of this tart was phenomenal! I loved the contrasting tastes between the fruits and pastry cream. The recipe also instructed to use chocolate on the bottom to keep the crust from getting soggy, which I did not enjoy as much because I felt like the chocolate was more overpowering than the pastry cream. However, the tart was still delicious!
This tart is perfect for the spring and even summer! If you try this out, don’t forget to email me @venegasa@student.epcusd401.org !
Tempering the eggs.
The pastry cream finished...yum!
