Strawberry Tarts

It’s a long story, I wanted to try making some Strawberry tarts.  Had the strawberries, picked up some cream and a packet of pastry at the shops and I’ll drop into that well known garden centre on the way home, the one that’s a little goblin pal of Harry Potter.  They have all of the fancy jams and baking stuff and they sell the strawberry tart syrup. Turns out they are now part of Sainsbury’s and it’s all their gear in the shop. 

So what am I going to do now, jelly, strawberry jam…….

You’re going to have to make it up yourself.  

Ingredients 

2 punnets of strawberries, 1 of them for the sauce. 

1 carton of Double Cream

1 packet of shortcrust pastry, and you’ll need some little individual tart trays/folks or just buy some individual tart cases

1 tablespoon caster sugar for the cream

Sauce

Strawberries 

1tablespoon cornflour 

5 tablespoons of sugar

1/2 cup ‘ish of water

Method

Make the sauce:

Put the sugar and water in a small pot and bring to the boil, swirl the pan to dissolve the sugar, boil on a low heat for about 5 minutes to make a stock syrup. 

Hull the strawberries and blast them in a food processor/liquidiser/hand blender until smooth. Add a level tablespoon of cornflour and blast again.  Pass the strawberry mixture through a sieve into a bowl to remove any seed remains. You want the syrup smooth and glossy. 

Add the strawberries into the stock syrup and bring back to a simmer, stirring for 5 minutes until the sauce turns glossy. Set aside to cool completely. 

Unroll the pastry, cut in half and roll the pastry a bit thinner about 1/8”, between greaseproof paper. 

Line the pastry cases with the pastry and trim the edges. Prick the base and sides with a fork and bake for 10 to 12 minutes at 180c.  Keep an eye that the pastry doesn’t balloon on the sides.  You can knock them back with a fork. 

Remove and set aside to cool. 

Whisk the cream with a spoonful of caster sugar until thick but don’t over whisk. 

Assembly 

Fill each pastry case with a blob of cream, add a large strawberry and press down into the cream then the messy bit….. first check the thickness of the syrup.  You want it to spread over the strawberries but not too thick. You might need to add just a splash of water to get the mixture right. Then spread a teaspoon of the sauce over the top of the strawberries and let the sauce run down the sides. You might need a practice Strawberry Tart…  or two. 
ideally if you use one of those squeezy sauce containers, you can pour the sauce out and it will keep in the fridge for a few weeks for another batch.

Of course, it is all a bit of a faff but very nice. i did end up getting hold of some bottles of the sauce stuff online and they are very good with the shop bought pastry cases if you give them a blast in the oven for 10 minutes. Either way nothing beats a Strawberry Tart.