Monday, April 22, 2013

Baking Sunday III: Strawberry tart

It wasn't actually Sunday, but I'm using the generic title :) This Saturday, I was coming from the pool and stopped to buy some strawberries, as I've seen them everywhere lately and took a chance to give them a try. Tasteless, of course, because the local sorts have not grown yet. So, as I wasn't going to get much pleasure from eating them, I decided to make a tart, to at least use their aesthetic potential.
The pastry base was a personally adapted sponge cake, which turned out perfect. I used three yolks and a spoon of water, which I beat with five spoons of brown sugar until it had the consistency of cream. Four egg whites were beaten with a knife tip of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla sugar. I then mixed the two manually, being careful to keep the airy texture. Added five spoons of flour and a bit of baking powder and put everything in the oven for half an hour. I was very excited to use my new tart tray, which is indeed non-stick and did its job perfectly.
I then had a little accident, as I was trying to warm a ready-made chocolate glaze in the microwave. 20 seconds in it got burned and the plastic cover made the whole house stink for hours. But I imediatelly got myself together and made another glaze out of cooking chocolate and butter, which I melted and mixed over bain-marie. I used about 100 g of each. Since I didn't want to wait much for the glaze to get a little thicker, I set it on the cake and then covered the outer part with strawberries cut in half. In the middle I sprinkled some almonds I cut roughly on the spot. As the glaze was still very hot, it mostly gathered in the middle of the cake and the butter raised to the top. That is why after half an hour in the fridge, the middle was white and everything was better than expected! I took half of it to my parents', who are regular cake eaters, as my mum is a very passionate cook and baker. I've already picked the recipes for May. This week, I'll just stick with some basic vegetarian recipes, because I don't have time or energy for anything fancy.

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