Julia Child's French Strawberry Tart

A friend of mine sent me a message on facebook saying they were making a strawberry tart and asking how to make the sweet pastry.. I gave a bit of advice, its fine to use caster sugar in the pastry rather than icing sugar, and also to generally not to handle the pastry too much. I then felt a bit guilty as I've never actually made a strawberry tart and then wondered if I had given the correct advice!

I decided that I'd better correct this and started through my cookery books. I struggled to find exactly what I wanted until I remembered that I have the Mastering the Art of French Cookery which I bought after I watched Julie et Julia. This has a classic french strawberry tart recipe, pastry, creme patisserie and strawberries with a light glaze. There are two options in the book for pastry of either a flan case or a sweet pastry, so I decided to opt for a sweet pastry. The recipe in the book is for one large tart, but as I have some small individual tart tins, I decided to do four individual ones and just halve the recipe.

First of all you need to make the pastry. My recipe book is quite old and I guess American in style given its Julia Child's recipe so the recipe is in old school ounces!

It then needs to be chilled before being rolled out, so whilst it was in the fridge I moved on to the creme pat.

The first and only other time I have attempted a creme pat it did not work at all so I was pretty nervous about making this. However, Julia Child's recipe book made it seem pretty easy so I followed the instructions exactly, et voila! A perfect creme patissiere! I put some cling film straight onto the creme pat and then popped it in the fridge to cool, whilst I got on with my pastry.

I quickly rolled it out and filled the tart tins. I always have problems with pastry shrinking and I remember that I saw a tv show where they blind bake the pastry and leave it overhanging the edge then cut if off later when the pastry is part baked so I thought I'd give this a bash!

The tart case is completely baked, as once its cooled you fill it with the creme pat and pop the strawberries on top then glaze it, then serve. There is no second bake.

As I decided to make 4 smaller tarts rather than one large tart, I was a bit unsure of the baking time so I decided I'd blind bake the tarts for 10mins with baking beans, then trim down the pastry, remove the beans and put it back in the oven until it was cooked. With hindsight, I'd suggest I should have baked it for less time before taking out the beans as the pastry didn't look as good as I'd have liked it to be.

I then waited for the pastry to cool, and got on with the strawberries. I washed and hulled the strawberries and left them whole. Then I left them to dry nicely and warmed some jam and a drop of water. I just popped it in the microwave rather than warmed it on the stove! I then assembled the tarts. I filled them up with creme pat then put the strawberries on top. I attempted to put a big one in the middle, and some smaller ones around the sides then I used a pastry brush and brushed in the hot jam to give it a nice glaze.

And here is the finished tart!!