Strawberry Tartlets

I bought 4 tartlets pans a few weeks ago and I knew that I wanted to start with strawberry tartlets, because those are my favorite tartlets. Today I bought some strawberries, which are btw ridiculously overpriced here in Holland! 3 euros for 500 gram ($4.20 for 2 cups)! Last year they were only 2 euros… Aside from spending so much on the strawberries, all went very well. They are certainly much easier to make than I thought it would be. Tart dough is so easy to work with, much easier than pie dough. And they came out looking really good! Plus they taste wonderful, so I rate these ‘tartelettes’ 5 out of 5!

- 300 gr strawberries, sliced in half

Tart Dough recipe: Martha Stewart - Baking Handbook

Ingredients:
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
- ½ cup confectioners’ sugar
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons heavy cream

Instructions:
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine butter and confectioners’ sugar. Mix on low speed until combined, about 2 minutes.
- Add egg yolks, and mix until incorporated, about 1 minute, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add ¾ cup flour, and mix on low speed just until the flour is incorporated, about 30 seconds. Add remaining ¾ cup flour along with the salt and cream, and mix just until flour is no longer visible, about 1 minute.
- Turn out dough onto a piece of plastic wrap, and shape into a flattened disk. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours of overnight. The dough can be frozen up to 1 month; thaw overnight in the refrigerator before using.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to an ½ inch thickness. With a sharp paring knife, cut out rounds of dough using a tartlet pan as a guide, leaving a ½ inch border around the edge. Fit the dough into tartlet pans, and lightly prick the bottom of the dough in each pan all over with a fork. Refrigerate tartlet shells until chilled, about 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. When tartlets are chilled, bake for 13 to 15 minutes until light golden brown. Cool completely on a wire rack. Remove the shells from the pans and set aside.

Pastry Cream recipe: makes 2 ½ cups, but you can halve this recipe, I only needed about 1 cup.

Ingredients:
- 2 cups whole milk
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped
- pinch of salt
- 4 large egg yolks
- ¼ cup cornstarch
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Instructions:
- In a medium saucepan, combine the milk, ¼ cup sugar, vanilla bean with seeds, and salt. Cook over medium heat until mixture comes to a simmer.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, cornstarch, and remaining ¼ sugar. Whisking constantly, slowly pour about ½ cup of the hot-milk mixture into the egg-yolk mixture. Continue adding milk mixture, ½ cup at a time, until it has been incorporated. Pour mixture back into saucepan, and cook over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, until it thickens, about 2 minutes. Remove and discard vanilla bean.
- Transfer to the bowl of an electric mixture fitted with the paddle attachment. Add butter, and beat on medium speed until the butter melts and the mixture cools, about 5 minutes.
- Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly onto the surface of pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate until chilled, at least 2 hours or up to 2 days. Just before using, beat on low speed until smooth.


My favorite pastry cream!

How gorgeous are these strawberries? I made sure to pick out really huge strawberries.

The tartlets before they went into the oven. Making the tart dough was so easy that I didn't feel the need to take pictures of the dough-making process.

For the assembling: you take your baked and cooled tartlet.

Fill it up with 3 tablespoons of pastry cream.

And top it with about 5 slices of strawberries.

And tada!!! So easy and delicious!