I grabbed this recipe from the Bourke St Bakery cookbook that my friend Ana bought me for my birthday. After visiting Bourke St for the first time last month and buying one of these tarts, I knew I had to attempt them at home. I didnt have the time to make my own shortcrust pastry, so I just bought the expensive/gourmet sort from Thomas Dux which worked really well.
The reason why I was baking on this particular weekend was for a bingo night I was having with some of my girlfriends. We each made something different and brought it over to eat whilst we played. These are the sorts of activities we are doing so we can all save money for our Europe trip!!
Ingredients: (Makes 20 Tarts)
4 sheets of short crust pastry
Strawberry Puree:
250g strawberries (1 punnet) washed & hulled
120g caster sugar
Creme Brulee Custard:
720ml pouring (whipping) cream
1 vanilla bean- split
10 egg yolks
80g caster sugar + extra for the caramel top
1. To make the strawberry puree, place the strawberries and sugar in a food processor and process unti smooth. I dont have a processor so I just kept chopping the strawberries and adding the sugar until it all dissolved and the mixture was a puree like consistency. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed
2. To make the creme brulee custard, place the cream in a saucepan and scrape the vanilla bean pod seeds and bean in as well. Bring this to the boil over a high heat. As soon as it starts to boil, remove from the heat and set aside for about 10 minutes to cool slightly
3. Place all 10 egg yolks into a stainless steal bowl and whisk to combine, add the sugar and continue whisking until the sugar is dissolved
4. Pour the lightly cooled cream through a fine sieve and discard the vanilla bean, then pour the cream into the egg yolk mixture, stirring to combine
5. Now place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, making sure that the base of the bowl does not touch the water. Continue stirring with a whisk until the mixture is smooth and thick(about 15-20 minutes), scraping down the sides with a spatula. Make sure that you keep on stirring, otherwise the mixture may curdle
6. Remove the bowl from the heat and whisk quickly for 2 mintues too cool quickly. Over the next hour whisk every 10 minutes until cooled. Use the spatula to clean down the sides and place cling wrap directly onto the mixture; refrigerate for 3 hours to set
7. Now we move onto the pastry. Set your oven to 200 degrees celsius. I slightly thawed each of my shortcrust pastry sheets and used a circular cookie cutter to create circular discs out of the pastry. To line the tins, place a pastry disc over each individual tart tin and press into the base. Moving around the rim, use your fingers to push the pastry into the edges. I used quite small tins, but if you use bigger ones, you will obviously get less then 20 tarts out of this recipe
8. Now use your index finger and tumb to force the pastry into the tin so that none is overhanging. Once they are all done, fill them with beads/rice/beans and blind bake for about 20 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool
9. Time to assemble the tarts. Place the custard mixture into a piping bag, it should now be a really thick consistency and quite east to pipe with. Place a custard layer on the base, then a small teaspoon of the strawberry puree and then pipe more custard over the top, hiding the strawberry and slightly overfilling the tart
10. With a small knife, scrape the custard to be flat with the top of the tart shell. Place in the fridge for another 2 hours to set
11. Lastly we cook the toffee top, the best bit of the tart. Sprinkle the top with caster sugar and burn with a blow torch until it is caramelised. Since I didn’t have a torch, I just turned the grill onto 220 degrees and placed the tarts in straight away and left the door open so the top would burn and caramelise but the custard filling wouldn’t melt and cook again.
So there we have it…my attempt at the Bourke St Bakery creme brûlée tarts. My friends enjoyed them thoroughly at the bingo night, with all of them being eaten. The recipe is lengthy and there is a lot of waiting time as the mixture is chilling, but if you plan your day properly, you can whip these up a lot quicker then I did. I think I will need to invest in blow torch for next time to get a crunchier top.
Recipe sourced from the book ‘Bourke St Bakery the ultimate baking companion’.
Enjoy! xx
mmm they look great!
Thanks chocolatesuze