French Recipe: Tarte Aux Fraises

This strawberry tart is a classic French dish that you will find in almost every boulangerie across the entirety of France. Although it may look complicated, we have a quick and easy recipe that will guarantee a stress free cooking experience, making for impressive results.

The trick for this strawberry tart, like most other dishes, is good quality ingredients. Luckily for you, France is the home to fresh and tasty produce. When choosing your strawberries, ideally head down to a local market and be guided by your senses to best choose some wonderful, fresh and tasty strawberries. 

Ingredients

  • 1kg of paté sablée (or around 250g)
  • 1kg of strawberries
  • 150g of jelly
  • A splash of water
  • Butter for the mould
  • 1 teaspoon of caster sugar

Method

Place the short pastry in a buttered tart dish and sprinkle with sugar

Prick the pastry base with a fork and cover with parchment paper and place some baking beans or some rice over the parchment to blind bake the pastry.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 15 minutes, remove the parchment and the beans and cook for 10 minutes more.

Put the jam in a saucepan with some water and simmer gently until it turns into a coulis

Once the pastry has cooled, take it out of the pastry case. Place the strawberries into the pastry and coat them with the jam syrup.

If you are feeling adventurous you can make a pastry cream and place it on the bottom of the tart just before adding the strawberries. The most traditional strawberry tart does include pastry cream but for the lighter pie, it is very possible and still very delicious to replace it with compote or fruit coulis.

Enjoy!