This recipe is adapted from the Ottolenghi cookbook which I love because of the fresh colourful recipes and interesting use of flavours. Many of the recipes are a glorious celebration of seasonal food. I have played around with the recipe making the sweet pastry into delicate crisp biscuits rather than tartlets. They look stunning and are perhaps a little easier to make.
The pastry can be made in advance and frozen and if you have time. The tartlet cases can be cooked in advance and kept in an airtight container a few days before they are needed. Just note this sweet pastry has to be cooked at a lower temperature than usual.
I have also discovered Harewood Bridge Pick Your Own Fruit Farm which allows you to pick beautiful fresh fruit to add to your cooking. Gooseberries, Tayberries, raspberries and blackcurrants are all happening now. The strawberries are all but over in Yorkshire but there are plenty of other soft fruit that can take their place.
To make summerberry tarts
Serves 6
Sweet pastry
330g plain flour
100g icing sugar
pinch of salt
180g cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 egg yolk
3 tbsp cold water
Mascarpone cream
120g mascarpone cheese
120g crème fraîche
½ tsp vanilla essence
zest from half a lemon
20g icing sugar
200g strawberries, hulled and thinly sliced
Place the flour, icing sugar, salt and butter in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse the ingredients until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and water and process until the mixture starts to come together (about 20 seconds). Empty the contents of the food processor bowl onto a cold surface and bring the pastry together with your hands, kneading it gently to form a ball.
Divide the pastry in half. Store one half in the fridge or freezer to use another time. Roll the other half of the pastry out to form a thin sheet about ½ cm thick.
Preheat the oven to 150C/Gas mark 2.
For tartlets
Cut out circles with a pastry cutter. Place each circle carefully in a buttered tartlet tin (a cake tin will do). Line each pastry case with a circle of scrunched-up greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans. Place the tartlets in the oven and cook for about 25 minutes or until they begin to brown slightly. Remove from the oven and cool.
For sweet pastry discs
Use a circular cutter about 7cm across to cut out 12 discs and place on a baking tray. Cool the discs in the fridge for 15 minutes. Cook the pastry discs for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.
Place the mascarpone cheese, crème fraîche, lemon zest, sugar and vanilla essence in a bowl and loosen with a whisk. Spread marscapone cream on one side of a pastry disc and top with sliced strawberries and another disc of pastry. O
r fill a tartlet case with the mascarpone and finish with fruit.
Dust with icing sugar and serve.
