Bing's Fruit Tarts
By: Bing
Published: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - 5:21am

Ingredients




12 sweet pastry cases (home-made or store bought)
6 large sweet strawberries
3/4 cup frozen blueberries
3/4 cup canned mandarin oranges segments
 cup chocolate chips or cooking chocolate
1 cup thickened (or double) cream
1 tablespoon (heaping) honey
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon gelatin granules (plain, unflavoured)
2 1/2 tablespoons water

Preparation

1 Start with 12 sweet pastry cases. You can make your own from scratch or you can buy frozen sheets and follow the manufacturer’s instructions and bake 12 pastry cases. Or you can use store bought ready made sweet pastry cases. 2 Now prepare the pastry cream filling. Add 1 heaping tablespoon of honey to a mixing bowl. Add 1 cup of thickened cream to the honey. Add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Whisk it all up together. 3 When the mixture is well mixed and has thickened, set aside in the fridge till ready to use. 4 Now prepare the fruits. Cut off the green leaves/stems from the 6 strawberries and half them across the centre so that there are 12 pieces. One for each case. 5 Drain the mandarin oranges and set aside 3/4 cup of it. Set aside 3/4 cup of frozen blueberries. 6 Melt 1/3 cup of chocolate chips in the microwave oven (about 1 min). 7 When the chocolate has melted, use a pastry brush and coat the insides of each pastry case with chocolate. This acts like a protective coat on the cases, and prevents the pastry cream from soaking into the cases and making them soggy. 8 When the chocolate coating has dried, fill each case with a big dollop of pastry cream, to level with the top of the case. Do not overfill. 9 Lay the fruits nicely on the cream. I placed the strawberry at one side, 2 pieces of mandarin oranges at the other side and the rest of the case was filled with blueberries. 10 Set tarts aside in the fridge. 11 In a small bowl, add 1 tablespoon of gelatin granules. Add 2.5 tablespoons of hot water. Stir till gelatin granules are dissolved. 12 Dip a pastry brush into the gelatin mixture and brush the top of the tarts with it. This helps to give the tarts a nice gloss, and holds all the fruit in place when it has set. 13 Serve the tarts chilled.

About


These are really easy to make as I have used lots of shortcuts, and they are really delicious. Everyone, from old to young, will love these.
For a step by step tutorial, check out the following link (available from 18 June 2010) -
http://www.storyofbing.com/?p=5540