Hopeful for Spring
Although it is certainly not spring weather yet here in the UK or the US, it is that time of year where we are always hoping for a bit of sunshine to peek through the dreary end of winter. We like to embrace this time of year by planning some bright and cheery recipes to carry us through to spring. But you also can’t go wrong with the comfort food that is much needed in winter. Recently, for example, we posted our recipe for brændende kærlighed (all about comfort), which is perfect for a cold day. It isn’t always easy to find the balance between heartier, warming recipes for winter and lighter, brighter spring recipes. But sometimes, you find the perfect combination of flavors that seems to embrace both!
Today’s Recipe
Today’s recipe is not only one of our more aesthetically pleasing dishes, but also a recipe for an incredibly delicious dessert! This fruit tart starts with a base of a chocolate shortcrust, which has a lovely mild chocolate flavor and is buttery and flaky. Then, we top it with our super smooth and yummy chocolate pastry cream. This is a wonderful custard to learn how to make at home, as you can use it in plenty of other desserts and pastries. Finally, we top the tart with fresh fruit and garnish. In this case, we chose the trifecta of berries: strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, and Swedish pearl sugar for a beautiful and clean look. You can really use whatever fruit you like! I think banana would be delicious too.
How to Make Frugttærte
The recipe starts with making the pastry cream, as this need to cool before you can use it in the tart. This process is simple and leaves you with the most amazing chocolate custard. Next, combine flour, cocoa powder, salt, and sugar for the tart dough. Crumble in the butter and add a bit of cold water until you have a cohesive dough. Chill this before rolling it out, lining a pie tin, and baking on its own. Once this has baked and cooled, assemble your tart! Pile on the delicious chocolate pastry cream and decorate however you like. We hope you try it out – this is certain to be an absolute showstopper!
Frugttærte med chokoladecreme (Chocolate and Berry Fruit Tart)
Ingredients
Dough
- 113 grams (8 tbsp or 1 stick) cold, cubed, unsalted butter
- 180 grams (1 1/2 cup) all purpose flour
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp granulated sugar
- 3 tbsp ice water (you may need a few more tablespoons if combining this by hand!)
Filling
- 1 portion chokolade kagecreme/chocolate pastry cream (you can also use storebought custard if you would like!)
Fruit
- 12 raspberries (you can use a 6oz package to cover the whole tart)
- 12 blackberries (you can use a 6oz package to cover the whole tart)
- ~8 strawberries (this is around half of a 16oz clamshell of strawberries, you may need the whole package to cover the whole tart!)
Instructions
- Make chokolade kagecreme ahead of time (following the steps in our recipe) and chill in the fridge until ready to use.
- Make the tart dough by combining flour, cocoa powder, salt, and sugar in either a mixing bowl or a food processor.
- Add your butter either by hand (crumbling the cold butter into the flour until it your butter is broken down into smaller than pea size chunks or it resembles sand) or in the food processor (add your butter and pulse until the mixture resembles sand).
- Add ice water (or just very cold water) and pulse in the food processor or combine by hand until the dough starts to stick together.
- It’s okay if it’s still a little crumbly, but if it’s not coming together at all, add as many tablespoons of ice water until the dough comes together.
- Wrap up your dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes. Towards the end of the resting time, preheat the oven to 190 °C or 375 °F
- After the dough has rested, roll out into a 12" circle, about ⅛" to ¼" thick. We used a 10" tart pan for this recipe!
- Prepare a tart pan by buttering the sides and the bottom and adding a piece of parchment paper to the bottom.
- Roll the dough onto the rolling pin and transfer to the tart pan by unrolling it over the tart pan.
- Lower the dough into the edge of the pan. Press down the corners gently, trying not to stretch the dough. If you need to patch any holes or add more dough to the edges to fill out the fluted tart pan edge, just press any excess dough onto the hole or thin edge.
- Clean up the edges by removing any excess dough by running a knife along the edge.
- Freeze the tart base for around 10 minutes.
- When it is time to bake, prick the bottom of the tart with a fork. Ideally, you would bake the tart with pie weights to start – if you don't have any, it is okay too!
- Bake the base for around 30 minutes (20 minutes with pie weights, then remove them for the remaining time!) or until the crust is baked – it can be hard to tell with chocolate crust when it is done, but it should no longer be doughy in the center! Keep an eye on the edges as well – you want to make sure they are not darkening too much.
- Remove from the oven and let the tart base cool.
- Once it has cooled, you can remove the edge of the pan.
- Spread the pastry cream in an even layer across the base of the tart.
- Wash your berries – we like to use raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries for this, but you can use your favorite berries/fruit!
- Cut the strawberries in half and arrange in a half moon shape across the pastry cream. If you would like to cover the whole tart, you can do that as well, just double the amount of fruit.
- Optionally, you can brush the top of the fruit with simple syrup or honey to add a shine. Enjoy!
As a long time reader of your blog, I thought it was high time I left a comment letting you know ladies know how talented and generous you both are sharing these recipes with us all, thank you! I was gifted four dozen eggs from my brother recently and as I pondered what to bake I turned to your blog and found this stellar recipe. 🙂 As I write, the custard is chilling in the fridge and so is the tart dough – a wonderful and delicious Saturday awaits me! As I’ve gotten older I prefer less-sweet desserts and this fits this bill perfectly – it’s also exquisitely beautiful. Well done, you two! I primarily bake only Scandinavian recipes so it almost goes without saying I enjoy your blog immensely and have found much so much of interest – keep up the fantastic work! And mange tak once again! xx
Sorry for leaving a comment riddled with typos – I meant to proof-read it before hitting send but I was waaay too keen, lol! 🙂
Hi, thank you so much for this lovely comment 🙂 I hope the tart turned out delicious!! We are so happy to have you here <3