What a baking-full weekend! After quickly preparing the almond butter cookies for Saturday, I decided to prep some dessert to either bring to some friends’ or to share and give out today. I’ve been baking a lot of cookies and shortbreads of late, so decided it was about time I did something a little more elaborate. A quick mental run through what ingredients I had available reminded me that I had a couple of jars of cherries I had bought in case my brother asked for black forest cake again, so I decided to use them for this dessert.
One problem: I didn’t have nearly enough butter to make a shortcrust pastry which I normally use to line my tarts. What I did have were two store-bought pastries in the freezer. So the night before, I put them into the fridge to defrost so they’d be ready to use in the morning.
The base recipe is from Ma Recette Facile, but since I wanted to avoid almonds, I decided to pair the cherry flavor with lemon. For this, I zested and juiced most of a lemon, after cutting out a few slices which I reserved to decorate with. The filling proportions were also adapted to the amount of cherries I had (700g vs. the recipe’s 900g), and I found the amount of filling I had was pretty good for the size pan I had. On top of changing the almond flavoring to lemon, I also replaced part of the sugar with vanilla sugar. In hindsight, I probably could have adapted my merise tartlet recipe for the bigger tart, but didn’t think of that while I was preparing.
For the base dough, I left “handles” of parchment paper on two sides to help remove the tart from the pan after baking. As for the lattice, I cut strips out of a second pastry (I used about half of that one), and laid them out first one way, then went on top with the remaining strips to form a grid as I was feeling a bit lazy to do the whole weaving over and under as I’ve done before on other tarts. Either way, I’d recommend folding over the lip of the outer crust over the ends of the lattice for a cleaner look and to prevent any burning of the parts that stick out. I had also intended to candy the three lemon slices so that they could stay permanently on the tart, but again, I was short on time so I just decorated with them, then removed before serving.
- 2 store-bought shortcrust pastries (or 1 recipe of pâte brisée/shortcrust pastry)
- 700 g jared cherries, drained
- 195 g cherry jar juice (minus the weight of lemon juice)
- 2 tbs cornstarch
- 1 packet (8g) vanilla sugar
- 105 g sugar
- 19 g butter, softened
- zest and juice of 1 lemon
- pinch of salt
- Preheat oven 200°C.
- In a bowl, mix cornstarch and 2 tbs of the cherry juice.
- In a medium saucepan, combine lemon juice, remaining cherry juice, half the sugar. Heat over medium heat, then add in the cornstarch slurry. Heat until thickened, stirring constantly.
- Remove from heat, and stir in the remaining sugar, butter, lemon zest, and drained cherries. Leave to cool slightly.
- Line a tart pan with your first shortcrust pastry (or roll out your homemade pastry, roll it out, and line the pan with it.
- Pour in the cherry filling.
- Cut out strips the remaining shortcrust pastry, cut out strips and lay them out in a lattice on top of the filling. Fold the lip of crust over the ends of the lattice.
- Bake at 200°C for 20 mins in the lower half of the oven, rotating halfway.
- Cool completely on a cooling rack.
Blue Blossoms Baking 