I don’t post about my desserts for Spilled Milk much these days – mostly because you’d get bored of endless photos of mini cupcakes. But these fruit tartlets I made Friday are new, and I was so pleased with them I thought I’d share them with you.
You’ve seen these tarts in a dozen bakeries – it’s a French classic. The crust is pâte sucrée – a sweet pastry crust that’s kind of like a sugar cookie. I filled them with lemon curd, although the traditional filling is pastry cream, and topped them with fresh fruit.
Usually looking at my finished desserts sets off an internal dialogue on how I could improve them. I think about how I could make them prettier, or more original, or more professional. But when I was done with these, I was pleased with my work. Yes, the shells could be thinner, the curd could have been more evenly distributed, but they still looked so . . . pretty. Really pretty.
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super pretty indeed! and yay for posting
Those look amazing! I hear you on the inner dialogue. It’s uncommon that I’m like “That went well, I’m totally satisfied”, but on the rare occasions it does happen, I savor it. Like I’d like to savor those… drool.
Fantastic job! They are gorgeous! Try different fillings! My mouth is so watering!
looking at these takes me back to days of my internship. I used to make these by the hundreds!!!! Hand rolling dough, pressing them in the tins, making curd or cream, and then finishing them by hand with fruit, and apricot glaze- hard work indeed but such a reward to look at the finished product!!! ( and to sneak one to eat (-:
Aw, thanks! I’m sure you’re much more of an expert on these than I am. Actually, do you remember how thin you rolled the dough for these types of tarts? I was doing about 1/8 of an inch, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try to get them thinner and getter a better ratio of crust to filling (I want the crust to be thin, but no so thin that they fall apart easily). They are SO much work but SO rewarding!
Barley an expert! I messed up so many times, I honestly thought I would get fired from my internship!
Where I interned we actually used a dough sheeter. We would make the dough, chll it, and run it through the sheeter. That made it a whole lot easier, because we would get even dough each time. we would set up the mini tins, lay the dough on top. Roll over it with a rolling pin, and then press the dough in each tin, and add addtional when needed. it really doesnt matter what it looks like since it wil be filled any way.