Brandied strawberry tarts with fresh whipped cream ... in the Thermomix

Anyone who knows me and knows my cooking abilities will know that dessert is not my strong suit. I suck at baking and I always struggle with trying to figure out what to make and serve for dessert when we have company.

Recently, we had some friends coming over for dinner and after a while of thinking, I had managed to figure out starters and mains but dessert still eluded me. I even posted on Facebook asking my friends to offer suggestions (I got some good ones!).

Then I looked into the fridge and found that I had a lot of strawberries waiting to be eaten and I thought that I would do something simple like fresh strawberries and cream, but that just seems like such a cop out.

Next, I decided that I would marinate the strawberries to give it a little something interesting to just fresh strawberries. This quickly evolved into the idea of perhaps a strawberry tart.

I'd like to point out that I have never made this dish before at that point and was rather nervous about the whole thing, but decided to be adventurous. I was experimenting on dinner guests, which I generally don't like to do, but these friends were our neighbors and well, they've seen me in my pajamas so an experimental strawberry tart would not be too terrible.

Here's what I did to make the tarts:

Ingredients:

• 500g strawberries halved
• 1/2 cup of spirits, rum, brandy or any sort you like
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 2 sheets of puff pastry, defrosted, halved
• 1 egg
• A dash of milk

Instructions:

• Halve the strawberries and put them into a large bowl.
• Pour in spirit, brown sugar and lemon juice. Mix thoroughly. Cover in cling wrap in put in fridge to marinate. After a few hours take out, stir, cover again and put back in fridge. Best if marinated overnight but if not, 4 to 6 hours is good.
• When ready to cook, thaw out two sheets of puff pastry. 
• Heat oven to 200°C.
• Halve the puff pastry sheets and fold over the edges on all sides to make a 1cm rim. Make an egg wash with the egg and milk and paint over the rim of the pastry.
• Place strawberries (without the liquid marinate) into the middle of puff pastry - divide equally between the 4 serves.
• Put into oven and bake for about 25 minutes or until the sides are golden brown.
• Serve with freshly whipped cream.

And of course, the cream was just quickly whipped up in my trusty Thermomix.

Ingredients:

• 250 ml Whipping Cream
• 40 grams Caster Sugar

Instructions:

• Speed 3, 1 Minute 15 seconds, Butterfly  - Place the ingredients in the TM 31 bowl and mix per settings.

If you find the cream is not thick enough, just whip it for an extra 15 or 30 seconds, but be careful not to over-whip it or you will end up with butter.

I'm very pleased to say that the tarts turned out to be delicious. Served with the whipped cream, which got all melty from the hot tart, it was just divine. The Boy loved it and our guests asked for spoons so they could scoop up the melted cream that had mixed with the brandy mixture from the strawberries. Very tasty!

If you do make this, be sure to post pictures for me to see either on Instagram - be sure to tag me with @langshipley or on my Daz In The Kitchen Facebook page.


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