Strawberry dreams – recipe

It’s that time of year when one end of year party rolls into the next.  We have the end of year ballet party, the swimming party and so on, these strawberry tarts are great to take along to any bring and share.  The pastry shells can be made in advance and even frozen, then putting them together is a doddle.

I find that it’s easier to serve small individual tarts instead of one large one which needs to be sliced.  I had never made the Strawberry Flan in my favourite recipe book Lynn Bedford Hall’s, Best of Cooking in South Africa.  I first recently made it as per the recipe and it was lovely, I just felt that I would prefer it to set a bit (I’ve added a bit of jelly to do this), I always use my Gran’s pastry recipe for everything and I chose to make it as small individual tarts.  This can be adapted to use many other fruits, it would be lovely replacing the strawberries with any other berries, if using gooseberries I would probably use lemon jelly.

STRAWBERRY DREAMS (makes 12 – 16)

Pastry

225g flour

170g butter or marg

60ml iced water

3ml salt

3ml sugar

Cut marg/butter into dry ingredients, combine totally.  Add cold water

Roll out and cut out to fit in the base of muffin tins with about 1 cm going up the sides.  Put these in the fridge to chill while the oven is heating.

Bake at 180deg C for about 20 mins (until golden).  Remove from tin and set aside to cool

FILLING

250 g strawberries

25 ml sugar

30 ml strawberry jelly

40 ml boiling water

250 g cream cheese

180 ml (¾ cup) cream

50 ml icing sugar

2 ml finely grated orange rind

2 ml vanilla essence

30ml strawberry jam

5 ml water

toasted almond flakes to decorate (optional)

METHOD

Hull and wash strawberries, halve and sprinkle with sugar.  Leave to drain in a colander for about half an hour.

Dissolve jelly in boiling water, stir until not at all grainy, set aside to bring to room temperature

Whisk jelly liquid, cream cheese, cream, icing sugar, orange rind and vanilla until thick and firm.

Spoon onto pastry shells.

Arrange strawberries on top

Heat jam and water and pour into a small sieve.  Glaze by holding sieve over berries and pushing liquid through using the back of a spoon.  Top with toasted almonds if desired.  Chill in refrigerator

If you like this recipe you may also like this lovely Gooseberry pie

 

 

 

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