Impress your guests with delicious Strawberry tarts with lime and basil cream

Level: Difficult
Total time: 3h + overnight in fridge

These strawberry tarts with lime and basil cream is a perfect fresh way to end a meal or to serve with an afternoon tea. The combination of the lime, basil and strawberry is amazingly sweet and tangy. The sweet dough is light and adds a delicious crunch, but it is also the most difficult tart dough to work with. If you want to go for an easier version you can replace it with a shortbread dough.

THE TIPS TO SUCCEED

1: To avoid the sweet dough getting sticky, keep it overnight in the fridge and work on it in a cold room. I also recommend to roll it out between 2 sheets of baking paper.

2: Use a firm, sweet strawberry type to balance off the tanginess of the lime

Let’s get started

Ingredients

Sweet Dough

• 190 g Flour
• 100 g Butter
• 100 g Icing Sugar
• 15 g Potato starch
• 1 ts Vanilla extract
• 1 pcs Egg

Lime and Basil cream

• 3 pcs Lime
• 95 g Sugar
• 50 g Butter
• 2 ts Maïzena
• 3 pcs Egg
• 20 leaves Fresh Basil
• 1 sheet Gelatine

Decoration

• 250 g Strawberries Firm and sweet
• 3 leaves Basil
• lime zest from 1 lime From limes used in the cream

How to do it

Start the day before serving by making the sweet dough. Add the flour, potato starch, icing sugar and butter into a bowl. Use your hands to combine the ingredients until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Then mix the egg and the vanilla extract together with a fork and work it into well into the mixture with your hands.

Put the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper and roll it using a rolling pin to a 1-2 cm thick dough. Wrap the paper well around the dough to avoid it from drying and leave it in the fridge over night.

Next day, roll it further (still between the sheets) until it gets 2mm thick. Put it back to the fridge for min 30 min. Butter your tart pans and sprinkle some flour over it. Cut out circles of dough that are slightly bigger than your tart pans and place them delicately into your pans. Lift the dough around the edges to make the dough fall well into the corners of the pan. Pick a fork a few times into each tart preventing it from puffing.

In order to get 6 tarts you may have work together remains of the dough and roll it out again. Use paper again and place in fridge if difficult to work with.

Put the tart pans in the fridge for min 30 minutes in order to avoid the dough schrinking during cooking

Cook at 180°c for 15-20 minutes or until it is slightly colored

Lime and Basil cream

Start by grating the zest from 2 limes, keep half aside for decoration. Recover the juice from 3 limes. Cut the basil leaves finely and put the sheet of gelatine in water

Put to boil the lime juice, zest from 1 lime, half of the basil, sugar and butter. In the meanwhile mix the eggs and the maïzena diluted in a bit of water

When the lime juice mixture is boiling pour it slowly over the eggs and maîzena while whisking vigorously. Pour the whole mixture back in the pan and bring to boil. Let it boil for around 3 minutes while whisking vigorously all the time

Squize the water out of the gelatine and mix it into the hot mixture

Add the rest of the basil and let it cool down to room temperature, turning it now and then. Cover up with plastic and let it cool down completely in the fridge

Decoration of the Strawberry tarts with lime and basil cream

Cut the basil finely and clean the strawberries. Add the lime and basil cream into a piping bag with tip number 3.

Place 3 strawberries in the middle of each pastry and add a small amount of cream under each strawberry in order to fix them better

Using the piping bag decorate with the cream around the strawberries

Add basil and lime zest on top before serving the tarts