John Torode's berry and mascarpone tarts recipe
The key to their success is the combination of sharp yet sweet fruit and a whipped cream filling, and not being too precious about how they look. The pastry can be a bit wonky but the soft fruit is so pretty it doesn’t matter.
Recipes extracted from My Kind of Food by John Torode (Headline, £25) Photography © Yuki Sugiura
See John Torode appearing live at BBC Good Food Show Summer in the City, ExCel London, 20-22nd May 2016.
Ingredients
For the pastry- 500 g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 1 pinch of salt
- 250 g softened butter, cubed
- 4 egg yolks
- 50 ml water
- 300 g mascarpone
- 120 ml double cream
- 50 g caster sugar
- 1 vanilla pod, slit lengthways and seeds scraped out
- 2 small punnets of berries (raspberries and blackberries – or whatever is in season), washed
- 1 200g tin cherries in syrup, drained
Details
- Cuisine: British
- Recipe Type: British
- Difficulty: Medium
- Preparation Time: 30 mins
- Cooking Time: 17 mins
- Serves: 12
Step-by-step
- Heat the oven to 200°C/gas 6.
- To make the pastry, first sift the flour and salt onto a worktop.
- Make a well in the centre, add the butter and icing sugar and gently work them together with your fingertips.
- Add the egg yolks and gradually draw in the flour, adding drops of the water as you go, until a dough forms.
- Shape the dough into a ball, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.
- On a lightly floured worktop, roll out the pastry and use a fluted cutter to cut out circles large enough to line the cups of a 12-hole jam tart tin (the cutter should be just a bit bigger than the size of a hole – normally about 6cm).
- Bake in the oven for 10–12 minutes – they’ll puff up in the centre.
- Take the tin out of the oven and push the centre down with a piece of baking paper, then put them back in the oven and bake for a further 5 minutes to cook the pastry completely.
- Turn the pastry cases out of their tins onto a wire rack and leave to cool.
- To fill and top the tarts, beat the mascarpone with the cream, sugar and vanilla seeds until fluffy.
Some more tart recipes to enjoy
Blackberry cottage tart recipe
Organic asparagus and hollandaise tart recipe
Rustic pumpkin, ricotta and caramelised onion tart recipe