Baking is not really my comfort zone... I think it is because I don't like to measure ingredients or follow the exact recipe. It is not just me - from cooking reality shows (e.g. Top Chef), you can see most of contestants are not happy when they have to make a dessert. Acutally, the fact that lots of cooks are not comfortable with making a dessert motivated me to bake at home. I think having a few good dessert recipes in my backpocket will help me a lot at some point.
Also, everyone loves to eat sweats. Dessert is such an easy food you can please anyone.
Peach Tart with Puff Pastry
First, we are going to make pastry cream (crème pâtissière) which we are going to spread over the puff pastry before decorating with peaches and blueberries. You can use pastry cream in many other ways - for example, you can fill choux or Éclair with it. After we make pastry cream, we are going to prepare the peach topping and bake the tart shell. I bought frozen puff pastry dough for our tart shell. I know how to make the puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) but I think the effort is not worth while for a home cook. If you really want to know how to make pâte feuilletée, please let me know. I will post the details at some point.
Pastry cream (Crème pâtissière)
Ingredients:
+ 250ml milk
+ 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
+ 2 egg yolks
+ 35g sugar (~3Tbsp)
+ 10g flour (~4tsp)
+ 10g cornstarch (~4tsp)
Procedures:
1. In a pot, mix milk and vanilla extract and bring to boil. Turn off the heat.
2. While milk is heating, whisk egg yolks and sugar together with a balloon whisk until the mixture is turned to pale yellow ('blanchir' stage).
3. Add flour and cornstarch and whisk to make sure there is no lumps.
4. Pour one half of the heated vanilla milk to egg+sugar mixture and whisk well*. Then, after the mixture is well mixed, pour the mixture back to the milk pot. Again mix well.
*This is called "temper". Because egg can be easily and quickly coagulated with heat, we need to temper (warm up) the egg mixture first with a bit of hot milk to prevent the eggs from being cooked and grainy texture.
5.Turn on the heat to low-medium, and start heating the cream while stirring continuously. Make sure the cream is not stuck on the bottom or at the edge of the pot. If you have a pot whose bottom is a round/curved shape, it would work better.
6. Cook 3 more minutes after the cream starts boiling (bubbling) to activate the starch which is going to thicken the cream as it cooks.
7. After achieving the thickness you are looking for, transfer the pastry cream to stainless still bowl and cover the top of the cream with plastic wrap to prevent any skin from forming on top of the cream. You need to actually push down the plastic wrap so that it touches the top of the cream. Cool down and reserve until use.
Peach topping and Puff pastry tart shell
Ingredients:
+ 3 peaches
+ some blueberry
+ puff pastry dough (pâte feuilletée)
+ apricot glaze (diluted with a bit of water)
Procedures:
[Peach topping]
1. Peel and slice the peaches and arrange in a wide pan. Add a few table spoons of water and sprinkle sugar if needed. (The peaches that I used were sweet enough, so I didn't add any sugar).
2. Over low heat, cook the peaches with gentle simmer until the peaches are softened enough. (not too mushy to handle). Turn off the heat and cool down in the pan.
[Puff pastry tart shell]
1. Preheat your oven to 400°F.
2. Roll the puff pastry to 2-3mm thickness. Use enough flour for the surface and for the roller so that the dough does not stick to either the surface or the roller.
3. Cut the pasty dough into a round shape. You can use templates as shown in my picture.
Tips: How to cut puff pastry
When you cut puff pastry, you need to cut it by pushing your knife from top to bottom but not by moving back and forth.
Puff pastry (Pâte feuilletée) is made of lots of layers of dough and butter. When the puff pastry is baked, the water in butter starts evaporating and the vapor pushes the dough layer up, and the butter will melt into the dough and add flakiness to the dough. As a result, you will get layers of air and very thin dough which are very flaky and buttery.
If you cut your dough by moving the knife back and forth, the motion will ruin all the layers and when you bake the pastry, it will not rise properly.
4. Poke the center of pasty dough with fork. These holes will let through evaporating water and prevent the dough from rising too much. I also put pie weights for one of my doughs to make sure that the center of the dough is not rising at all.
5. Lower your oven temperature to 350°F, and bake the tart shell until it is golden brown. Usually it takes about 25min. To achieve even brown color, turn your sheet pan every 10 min when you bake the tart shell.
6. Take out the baked shell and transfer to wired rack and cool it down to room temperature. The shell should have a hollow center like in the picture below. If not, you can push the center down with a spoon.
7. Spread pastry cream and arrange your cooked peaches and blueberries on top of the pastry cream. Brush the tart with apricot glaze for finishing.
Hope you enjoy the tart!
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