Strawberry Lemoncurd Tart

Does celebrating/showing love to your loved one require a gift?

One of my friends quoted in face book,

“If you are with the right person, everyday is your valentine’s day”

I find above words are absolutely true. However,  I understand that the definition and celebration of love differs from person to person and it is nothing wrong to buy a gift according to their capabilities and make their loved one more happy on special days like today. At the same time, one need to understand that getting/giving gifts alone won’t fulfil the heart. I will never stop if I start talking about it. Before that, let me go for today’s recipe.

When I prepared Lemon curd, preparing a lemon curd tart from the scratch was also in my to-do list using it. My web search yielded many results among which I selected this as it used the strawberry coulis too (which I prepared for my breakfast bread) for filling of tart.

This is my first experience of making a sweet tart. My attempt gave me a proper results but the edges of the tarts were shrunk a little after baking. If you want to prepare it in a quick way, buy a ready roll shortcrust pastry, bake it and enjoy with your own creative filling.

As I used my leftover strawberry coulis for this recipe, I couldn’t show stepwise pictures for it. I’ll be posting a detail and separate post for strawberry couli for sure in upcoming days.

Basic Information:

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Idle Time: 45 minutes (30 minutes for shortcrust pastry and 15 minutes for final set)

Cooking Time: 1 hour

Makes: 12 mini tarts

Ingredients:

For Sweet Shortcrust Pastry:

All purpose flour/ Plain flour/ Maida – 2 cups

Caster sugar – 3 tablespoons

Cold butter – 1/2cup + 2 tablespoons

Iced water – 3 tablespoons

For Strawberry Coulis:

Strawberry – 1/2 cup, cut into small pieces

butter – 1 tablespoon

Sugar – 2 tablespoons

Cornstarch – 1/8 teaspoon

Water – 1 tablespoon

Strawberry – 3 nos, sliced, for decorating

For Lemon Curd:

Lemon curd – 12 tablespoons (Click here to see how to prepare lemon curd)

Method:

For Sweet Shortcrust Pastry:

1) In a mixing bowl, mix together the flour, sugar and the butter.

2) Make a fine bread crumbs like flour mixture as shown in picture.

3) Add water little at a time and make a smooth dough. Sometimes, you can form smooth dough using 2 tablespoons of water itself.

4) Knead it lightly and keep inside the bowl covering with the cling film.

5) Keep this dough inside the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

6) Meanwhile, prepare strawberry coulis and lemon curd. Make them to cool to a room temperature.(Steps for these two are given below)

7) Preheat the oven to 350F/176C.

8) Roll the cold pastry on a floured kitchen surface until 1/8inch thick.

9) Place them inside the tart tins and form the proper shape as shown in the picture. Make sure the pastry is sticking with the tin.

10) Place the parchment paper over it and fill with the baking weights. If you don’t have the baking weight, use dried chickpeas or uncooked rice or dried beans or coins. Bake it exactly for 10 minutes.

11) Remove the weights and bake again for another 10 minutes or until the crust slightly changes into golden brown in colour.

12) Allow it to cool for a while.

For Strawberry Coulis:

1) In a saucepan, melt butter and sugar. Heat till the butter melts.

2) Add strawberries and reduce the flame to low. Continue stirring till the strawberry becomes soft. Allow it to cool to a room temperature.

3) After cooling, blend it until smooth.

4) Pour the blended paste to a sauce pan again. Mix corn starch in a tablespoon of water and mix with strawberry paste. Heat it for sometime or until it becomes thick.

5) Strawberry couli is ready now. Cool and refrigerate.

For Assembling:

1) Take a tart, pour a teaspoon of strawberry couli into it. Keep this as a bottom layer.

2) Next top with the one or two tablespoons of lemon curd. Decorate it with sliced strawberries.

3) Keep inside the refrigerator for sometime to set the curd.

4) Repeat this with remaining tarts and enjoy!!!

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all!!!