Strawberries & Cream Tarts

An acquaintance of mine is moving away from Berlin, and her best pal her in town threw a surprise going-away party for her. Since she apparently loves strawberries, and since strawberries are actually delicious this time of year (as opposed to being super tasteless only a month ago), I opted to make a strawberry tart.

I actually made the Strawberries & Cream Tarts (page 80) recipe in two different ways. The first was in a cupcake pan. Since the recipe makes six four-inch tarts, and I don’t have tart pans, I thought I would make 12 two-inch tarts. Unfortunately, this was a bit of a struggle for me, namely because the dough was just not working. The end result came out awesome, but unfortunately, some of the tarts lost their bottom layers and all of them were crumbly and messy.

For round two, I opted to make one larger tart, which turned out great, except for the timing of it. Because I did it in the morning instead of the night before, the tart didn’t have enough time to cool before I put the cream on top, making it a sticky, melty, mess. Arriving at the party, I put it in the fridge to let it solidify, which it did about about 60 minutes. I then cut it up and while it didn’t look so amazing, I hope it tasted good (although I don’t know, because I left the party shortly after).

As for the recipe, it’s awesome, but it simply is something that needs to be made when there is a lot of time to properly chill and prepare things. One change I did make is that although the recipe for the coconut cream calls for vanilla extract, I left it out, as it was sweet enough on its own.

Made: May 31, 2013