Fruit Tarts

There are some food that you associate with breakups (i.e. chocolates), some that you associate with weddings (i.e. beautifully crafted cakes) and some that you associate with relationships. Well, I associate fruit tarts with time spent with my mother.

Growing up, I was never strong in my academic subjects. My parents enrolled me in numerous tuition class and never gave up encouraging me to do just slightly better. Every Sunday after church, my mother would encourage me to attend my English tuition by promising a nice lunch with her after tuition (plus window shopping of course). We would nearly always end up at Delifrance for some mother-daughter time and a fruit tart for me. Because mum works full time, those precious moments spent together were highly cherish by me, and I’m sure by my mum as well.

I love the custard that filled the sweet crust. The slight tang from the strawberries + kiwi fruit goes so well with the sweetness of the crust and custard. I remembered savoring every bite while mum and I chatted about tuition, school and shopping.

Well, so many years have past but my love for fruit tarts remain. I spotted Mrs Kwok’s recipe and was impressed by how easy it seems to be…and so I thought! I underestimated the time and skill required to make these little beauties though and screwed up big time with the custard the first time round. Obviously, I did not heat the custard long enough and it was still watery. The 2nd time was better-but there wasn’t enough custard to fill the tart shells! I quickly whipped up another batch of custard and that seem to be sufficient.

See how wet the custard was?

These babies aren’t as pretty as the ones at Delifrance but bitting into one sure bring backs memories. Mum- fruit tart and lunch at Delifrance when I get back next year! =)

Fruit Tarts (4 large size tarts and 10 mini ones)

Custard Cream 4 tablespoon of corn flour
2 egg yolks
4 tbsp of sugar
200 ml of milk

Tart Shells
500 grams of cake flour
150 grams icing sugar
250 grams butter
2 large whole eggs

1) Custard- Combine egg ylk and corn flour. Whisk till ingredients combined. Add sugar into the yolk mixture and mix well. Warm milk on stove. Stir warmed milk gently into the egg yolk. Put the mixture back on low heat and keep stirring till it gets thicken (expect 10-15 minutes of stirring if not more). Chill.

2) Tart Shells- Cream butter and icing sugar. Add eggs. Fold in 2/3 flour by batches. Gather up dough and knead it genthly. Add remaining flour to make into a smooth dough. Roll dough in longular shape and cut into equal portion. (I cut 4 into big portions and 10 tiny ones). Shape dough into tart mould. Bake for 250 C in 180C preheated oven.

3) Assemble- Spoon custard cream into shell and top it with fruits. If you like, heat up some jam and glace the tarts.