Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon and today we are making mini fruit tarts with
a sugar dome over the top, a pistachio base, orange curd on the inside, topped with diplomat
cream and fresh fruit.
To make the pistachio base you'll need sugar, hazel nuts, pistachios, flour, one egg, green
food colouring and butter.
I'll put all the recipe quantities on my howtocookthat.net website for you in grams, ounces and cups
and I'll link to that below.
Add the butter to the flour and using a knife cut the butter into the flour so that you
get smaller pieces.
Then begin to rub the butter into the flour and you do that by squashing it between your
fingers and thumbs, rubbing it as you squash it.
And because you've got a handful of flour there it's rubbing the flour into it.
Keep doing that until the mixture looks like fine bread crumbs like this.
Place the pistachios into a bag with the hazelnuts and then break them into fine pieces using
a rolling pin, you could smash it or you could just roll over it with a rolling pin.
You could do this in a food processor instead if you have one.
Add the nuts and the sugar to the flour mixture and stir those through and then if you like
add a little bit of green food colouring.
Beat your egg, this just makes it easier to mix it into the pastry.
And then add it into the pastry mixture and stir until it starts to come together.
At this point take it out of the bowl and knead it until you get a nice dough, it looks
a bit like green playdoh at this point.
Wrap it in plastic and put it in the fridge.
For the orange curd we need butter, sugar, eggs, the rind of one orange, fresh juice
and gelatin.
Add a little of the juice to the gelatin and stir it quickly through and then leave that
to absorb the liquid.
Grate the rind from your orange making sure you don't go down into the white part because
that wouldn't taste nice, you just want the orange coloured bit.
Place that into a saucepan with the juice and the sugar.
Heat it over high heat to bring it to the boil and then continue to boil until it concentrates
down to only one cup.
Add in the gelatin and stir it and that will just melt into the liquid.
Now add your eggs and whisk those through quickly and then stir for a few minutes until
it thickens, the eggs will cook and that will thicken up the mixture.
Remove that from the heat and add in the butter and let that just melt into your curd.
Pour it through a sieve, now this just gets rid of any little bits of rind so it leaves
you with a totally smooth curd.
Take your pastry out of the fridge and roll it out on some plastic wrap, now you may need
to use a little flour on top to stop the rolling pin from sticking.
Once you have it fairly thin cut circles for each of the bases.
For each one, add a circle of baking paper and then the base of the tin
Then flip it over, shape it again then add it to the base of the tin.
Then just use your fingers to make sure it fits right the the edges of your tin.
For the sides you are going to need to measure how high you want the pastry to come and use
a ruler to give yourself a cutting guide.
Then just slice along in a straight line using a pizza cutter, if you push firmly enough
it should cut right through the plastic wrap.
Take your piece, add it to the tin around the edge.
The wrap just helps make this a little bit easier.
Then once it is all in place just peel off the plastic.
Place those onto a baking tray and bake them in the oven for about 10 minutes or until
they are starting to go golden brown on the tops like this.
Now for the diplomat cream we need egg yolks, cornflour, sugar, milk and cream.
Pour the milk and cream into a saucepan and add the cornflour and sugar to the yolks.
Whisk the yolks together and this will be quite thick but just mix it as well as you
can.
And then add in a tablespoon of the liquid and whisk again until you have a smooth paste.
Heat the milk and cream until it just starts to boil.
And then add that to the egg yolk mixture whisking the whole time.
Return that mixture to the pan and stir until it thickens and because it has the cornstarch
in there it will go quite thick.
And you need to stir it constantly so it doesn't get any lumps.
And then you want to keep stirring it once it starts bubbling just for a couple of minutes
to let all the starch granules burst so it gets rid of that floury taste.
Pour that into a flat dish and cover it with plastic wrap to stop it forming a skin.
Then place the in the fridge to cool down.
By now your pistachio pastry will be cooled.
Push the base up and out of the tin and then remove the base and the baking paper.
Place heaped teaspoons of orange curd into each tart.
And then once your custard is completely cooled whip some additional cream to stiff peaks
with some vanilla extract.
Give your custard a whisk, don't worry that it looks really thick that is what we are
looking for.
Add in a scoop of the whipped cream and whisk it through to lighten it, and repeat that
with another scoop so that it is a bit thinner and lighter and it looks like this.
This just makes it easier to intergrate into the rest of the whipped cream.
Now tip that into the rest of the cream and fold it through, just scooping down to the
bottom and back over the top, folding the two together and you end up with a beautiful
light diplomat cream.
Place that into a piping bag and pipe little stars around the edge and all the way into
the middle.
Then place those in the fridge.
To make the sugar domes - you'll need sugar, water, glucose syrup, a candy thermometer
and a silicone hemisphere mold.
Spray the mold with a little cooking oil and rub it over the surface so the sugar doesn't
stick.
Place the sugar, water and glucose syrup into a pan over high heat.
Once it starts to boil you want to wash down the sides of the pan using a wet pastry brush.
This gets rid of any sugar crystals from the sides of the pan - if you leave them there
it can make the sugar syrup crystalize later instead of staying clear.
Add your candy thermometer - this took a bit of experimenting to figure out how make these
sugar domes work - so I'll show the right way that works.
Heat it up to 150 C or 300F then immediately remove it from the heat and cool to 130 C
or 266 F.
Prop your silicone mold up on a board on an angle so the excess sugar syrup can run down.
And I've just put some baking paper here at the base so it doesn't stick to the counter.
Pour the hot sugar syrup over each one.
If you pour in a circular motion over the top of each mold then it will cover all of
the sides.
Once it is just starting to thicken take a cookie cutter and press down to make an indent
right at the base of each dome.
You'll need to rub a little oil on this cookie cutter so that it doesn't stick.
And you need to push it down firmly.
Then once it is cold and set hard, peel off the mold and then just gently push up from
the inside because we cut with the cookie cutter it will just snap off because it is
so thin and dainty there.
You can store those in an airtight container until you are ready to use them.
Add some fresh fruit to the top of each tart and then place a sugar dome over the top.
To eat it, you just shatter the dome and dig in to some of that pistachio base, orange
curd, diplomat creme and crunchy sugar.
This dessert was inspired by one I saw by an Aussie pastry chef Gunawan and I'll link
to his instagram below.
I've completely changed his recipe but as you know I like to shout out to people if
I get an idea from them because I think it is a good thing to do.
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Make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday.