Dani Goes South

Confession: As a kid, I hated chocolate. I know. Cue a parade of red flags, amiright? Let me back up and say this is no longer the case. Chocolate is essential. However, as a kid, fruit desserts were my jam (GET IT?). Still are! Though, I no longer wave away the chocolate options like some kind of monster. Fruit tarts always got me…maybe it’s that I’m a sucker for color and the jewel-like, neatly arranged fruit- sue me. However, gotta say… More often than not they totally disappointed. From lackluster crust to oddly textured, overly sweet, or, gasp, nonexistent fillings, I decided there was room for improvement, and hey, I’m up for an oven-related challenge in the dead, moist, boob-sweat-inducing heat of the Austin summer. WHY THE HELL NOT?

Sure, this recipe has layers…lits and figs. I won’t say she’s a simple lady. She’s got a lot going on! However, most of this is just getting some really basic French techniques down. In no GD way am I a French pastry chef, but this comes out seamlessly, is so delicious, summery, bright and frankly, pretty damn impressive when you set it down at the table of your small, socially-distant gatherings consisting of members of your household. Hehe.

Plus, I see all the breads we’re making online…you got the time! Let’s get into it.

Essentially, we’ve got 4 things going on here:

A vanilla bean crème pâtissière, which, spoiler alert, it’s basically an incredibly decadent vanilla pudding. You could take this recipe and even add your own flavorings like melted chocolate, citrus zest, almond, etc. For this version, we opt for vanilla bean, with a generous dose of sea salt to offset all the sweetness happening. Sure, it takes a little whisking, and time to chill in the fridge… Did I spill milk all over my kitchen once during testing, ABSOLUTELY. BUT! Once you get the hang of it, it’s SO easy, and again, one of 2 really solid base recipes within this dessert to know and adjust to your liking.
A pâte sucrée, which is like a shortcrust. I double down and add vanilla bean paste to this recipe, and it smells just like a sugar cookie. Additionally, after much testing, I realized confectioner’s sugar really lends itself to a more crisp-tender crust. Granulated sugar got a bit too caramelized during baking, and when coupled with the chocolate shell…well…you won’t not-NOT chip your tooth. Go with confectioner’s. Trust.
A melted chocolate shell lining the crust with a sprinkling of flaky salt. Feel free to forego this, but the reasoning behind it is two-fold: 1. It creates a barrier from the moisture-heavy fruit and your crust, preventing sogginess. 2. The chocolate + salt is the perfect foil to all the bright fruit, and the vanilla pastry cream. It’s like, you’ve already come that far in the recipe, why skip it, ya know?
Fresh fruit with a super simple glaze of apricot jam reduced down with a dash-o-water.

Boom. Simple. Okay, not boom, but I think you deserve a treat, alright?

I’ll lay out a few tips/things to keep in mind: 1. We make the pastry cream 1st, as it needs about 2+ hours to fully chill, which, I mean, don’t we all? 2. The crust gets refrigerated for 1 hour prior to rolling then frozen for 30 minutes post rolling. 3. The crust gets blind-baked- AKA a confusing-sounding term that translates to covering your pastry with foil, and some sort of weights such as beans or actual pie weights to prevent it from puffing up. 4. Fully cool the crust prior to filling, or things get more melty than we want, and therefore, rapidly less fun.

Ingredients

For the vanilla bean pastry cream:

4 egg yolks

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tbs. vanilla bean paste (or 2 whole vanilla beans, seeds scraped, plus 1/2 tsp vanilla extract)

1 tsp. sea salt

2 tbs. cold butter, cut into small pieces

For the crust:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar

8 tbs. butter, very cold, cut into small pieces

1 egg yolk

1 tbs. vanilla bean paste

1 tbs. heavy cream

1 tsp. salt

For the chocolate:

2 oz dark chocolate

Flaky sea salt

For the fruit + glaze:

Roughly 2 dozen strawberries, hulled and halved

1 large mango, cut into no thicker than 1/2” slices

2 kiwis, cut into roughly 1/3” - 1/4” thick slices

1 cup blueberries

1/2 cup blackberries

1/2 cup apricot jam

Dash water

Directions

1. Make the vanilla bean pastry cream. Separate your egg whites from the yolks, placing the yolks into a medium mixing bowl, and reserving whites in the refrigerator for later use (not here, but let’s not waste them, right?). Give your yolks a whisk to get them started. At this time, begin heating your 1 1/2 cups whole milk on low- we are just looking to warm it through, not bring it to a boil. To your yolks add your flour, sugar, and salt. Whisk everything to combine- it is going to look strange and crumbly initially, but if you keep whisking, it will begin to smooth out. If it still looks not 100% smooth, don’t worry about it, we are going to whisk plenty more when we add in our milk. Turn the heat off the stove and transfer your warmed milk to a handled liquid measuring cup for easy handling, leaving the pot you warmed it in on the stove.

2. While whisking constantly, pour about 1/4 cup of the warmed milk into your egg/sugar/flour/salt mixture. We are tempering our eggs, so as not to shock and scramble them. While whisking continuously, pour in the warmed milk, about 1/4 cup at a time until fully incorporated. Transfer this mixture back to the saucepan on the stove over medium heat, while whisking constantly. At first, the mixture will appear frothy and you’ll probably wonder why it isn’t thickening. The mixture will thicken up after a few minutes, so whisk, whisk, whisk! Once the mixture has reached pudding-like consistency, pause your continual whisking a few seconds to see if large bubbles begin to emerge from the pastry cream. If so, whisk a few more seconds, then remove from heat. Pour the pastry cream over the fine mesh sieve set atop your mixing bowl. Stir in the vanilla bean paste. Set a layer of plastic wrap directly atop the pastry cream so it will not form a skin. Refrigerate until completely chilled, about 2+ hours. You can absolutely make this a day in advance.

3. Make the crust. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a dough blade, combine your flour, sugar and salt, and pulse to combine. Sprinkle your very cold butter, cut into small cubes atop the flour mixture, and pulse to combine until the butter resembles the size of peas. Time to incorporate our liquids so we have a perfectly supple dough. Through the feed tube of the food processor with the machine running, add your heavy cream, egg yolk, and vanilla bean paste. Allow to process until dough forms a mass around the blade. Transfer dough to a plastic wrap-lined surface and form into a disk. Wrap and refrigerate 1 hour. You can make this dough a day in advance as well. In both cases you’ll want to allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 10 minutes prior to rolling (15-20 if made in advance)

4. Roll the crust. Lightly flour your work surface, the dough, and rolling pin. We will be rolling our dough to roughly 2” wider than our tart pan so we have room to tuck the dough into the bottom and sides of the pan. For this recipe, I used a 9” tart pan, so I rolled my dough to an 11” circumference, 1/4” thick circle. This dough is very forgiving and supple, so work gently with your rolling pin, turning the dough as you go to achieve an even thickness. Roll dough onto rolling pin and gently transfer onto your tart pan. Picking up the edges of slack, gently press the dough along the sides of the pan. Use your rolling pin to trim excess dough by rolling across the top of your tart pan. Save these scraps and use them to fill in anywhere you feel is not of even thickness. Like I said, this dough is very forgiving- it will work with the warmth of your hands to meld with the dough in the tart pan, just work gently. Freeze for 30 minutes and preheat your oven to 375F.

5. Blind bake the crust. A weird way of saying baking a crust or pastry shell with nothing inside of it, weighted down usually with foil and some sort of weight such as beans, or actual pie weights to prevent it from puffing up or even rupturing as all of the buttery goodness steams. I personally have not yet purchased pie weights. I find dried beans to be a perfectly acceptable (and cheap) substitute. Save them after baking in a Mason jar to reuse for the same purpose. Remove the pastry shell from the freezer and grab some foil and a fork. Gently prick the bottom surface area of the crust with a fork. Tear off some large strips of foil and use them to wrap the outer edges of the crust. Fussy, I know, but I found through testing that these edges beat the rest to the browning punch, so let’s mitigate that, mmkay? After you’ve lined the outer edges with foil, place two additional layers of foil atop the entirety of the pastry shell. Pour in enough beans to go halfway up the tart shell. Bake for 14 minutes, rotate halfway and bake another 12 minutes. Remove the beans/weights/2 outer layers of foil from the pastry shell leaving the foil around the outer edges intact and bake an additional 5-7 minutes, until crust is golden brown/blonde in spots. Allow to cool completely before transferring the shell on the bottom of the tart pan to either a cake stand, plate, or trivet for easy rotating during assembly.

6. Make the chocolate shell + fruit glaze. Pour 2 inches water in a small saucepan and set a heatproof bowl atop it over medium-low heat. Pour your 2 ounces of chocolate into the bowl, and gently melt in the double-boiler, stirring occasionally with a silicone spatula until melted. Pour into your cooled tart shell. Use an offset spatula (or any small spatula) to smooth out the chocolate into a thin, even layer along the bottom and up the sides of the tart pan. Give the chocolate a generous sprinkling of flaky sea salt and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Dump the water out of the saucepan and to it add the apricot preserves and a splash of water. Heat on medium low, stirring regularly, until a thin mixture has formed and it begins to gently simmer. Turn off the heat.

7. Assembly time! Finally, amiright? ;) Take your pastry cream out of the fridge, and pour it atop the chocolate in the pastry shell. Smooth it out with that offset spatula. Now, if I may, a quick note on fruit arrangement. The first time I tested this, I got all, well, me, and heavy-handed with both placement and color-blockage, resulting in a situation that was kind of like… “YOU get a strawberry tart! YOU get a kiwi tart! YOU get a mango tart!” You guys remember when Oprah gave away tarts? Anyway, all this is to say that a more concentric arrangement of fruit results in everyone getting a little bit of everything in their slice, which is what we want. That being said, arrange your fruit however you like, it will all end up delicious. Also, this tart would be delightful with peaches, plums, raspberries- frankly, insert most seasonal fruit, we’re in business. Once you’ve arranged your fruit, lightly brush on the reserved glaze. Refrigerate for an hour prior to slicing and serving to give everything a chance to set up. I will say, that chocolate shell really does its job both in flavor and structural integrity. I ate leftovers of this out of the fridge a day and a half later and the crust was not at all soggy.

I love the way this crust holds up and is crisp, but slightly tender with that buttery sugar cookie essence. The salted dark chocolate gives me major chocolate-covered berry vibes, but lightened up with that vanilla bean pastry cream, which, side note, I really want to throw in a doughnut. It’s just fresh and bright, and somewhat rich but also incredibly light at the same time. It’s everything my kid self would have heart-eye emoji’d at in the bakery, and then would NOT be disappointed by.

I know I did not share process shots of this— I was totally not planning on shooting it initially, but I am SO here for any questions regarding this entire recipe process. I would love start sharing some more involved how-to’s via stories on Insta, but hot damn, this season of life has proven to be delightfully, unexpectedly busy- in good, good ways that I am very excited to share, like, in the next couple weeks (EEEEE!) so I’m excited to revisit that once life has calmed down just the teeniest bit by September…

I’m so happy to be back here, and I’m so happy you landed on this recipe. I know it has been an unbelievably difficult time (I’m wordy, and I can’t even begin to expand on that in a trivial blog post), in a hideous sh*t state (too harsh?), but I really, really hope that everyone has been staying safe, and moreover, staying happy and with those you love. I hope you’re learning, doing, cooking, gardening, and making, and ALL. OF. THE. THINGS.

If you’re not here for this multi-step beautiful monster, then never fear, I’ve got some incredibly streamlined beauts coming your way so very soon! (But also, there might be fresh pasta soon too, sooo…it’s called balance.

Either way… I’m really, really glad you’re here.