Basic Sweet Tart Crust and Almond Cream Filling

I love any kinds of tart. Lemon tart, pear tart, blueberry tart etc. If you know how to make tart crust and almond cream, you can do any kind of tart you like. Tart crust is much easier than pie.

Sweet Tart Crust

Ingredients
200g of plain flour
70g of powdered sugar
30g of almond powder
100g of butter, 1cm cubed
1 egg, whisked

Instruction
0. Before starting, make sure all ingredients are cold.
1. Pulse flour, powder sugar and almond powder about 7-8 times.
2. Add butter cubes and pulse about 15 pulses, or until you don’t see a bit, looking like bread crumble or finely grated cheese. In the middle of this process, check the inside and the blades with a spatula not to have anything left unmixed.
3. Add whisked egg while processing so that it is incorporated evenly.
4. Take the batter out to lightly floured surface. Knead lightly about twice, then divide and make into two mid size balls, and flatten into 1cm thickness. Make sure there is no crack. Wrap tightly, and rest at least 3 hours. You can keep this in a freezer for 2 weeks.
5. Flour working surface lightly, and put the dough. Cover with a sheet of wrap larger than the baking pan you use.
6. Roll the dough to about 3mm thickness, and to a slightly larger than the surface and the height of your pan.
7. Grease the pan. Press the dough to a pan very gently, starting from the middle. Using fingers, make sure the dough is set on the side and corner too. At this stage, still keep the wrap so that you can work on the wrap without making a mess or adding additional flour. If it looks all set, remove the other wrap. Role over the pan to remove excessive dough. (This dough can be a delicious cookies you can bake next to this crust.)
8. Cover the pan, and rest in a fridge for 1 hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven at 170c.
9. If you do blind bake, cover the inside of the dough with a sheet of foil, and place baking weight stones. Bake for 15 mins, then taking out the foil and weights, and bake for 15 mins or until the bottom surface becomes golden brown.

*If you skip blind bake process, before resting the dough in a fridge (step8), with a folk, make small holes at the bottom.

Almond Cream Filling

Ingredients
60g of butter, soft, with a room temperature
60g of powdered sugar
60g of almond powder
1 egg, with a room temperature, whisked
1/2 teaspoon of almond essence (optional, can be substituted with vanilla essence)

1. Sift or whisk almond powder.　Preheat the oven at 180C
2. With an electric mixer, whisk butter until it becomes smooth and pale.
3. Add sugar and mix until it is evenly mixed with butter, no need to mix too much.
4. Add a little egg, about 1/4 of the egg, and mix well with an electric mixer until it is all consistent and well mixed. This step is very important.
5. Then add even less amount of egg than step 4, then mix again. Repeat this 3-4 times until you add all egg, and mix until it becomes smooth.
6. Change into a spatula. Add almond powder all once to a bowl of step5, lightly mix.
7. Add this batter to a tart dough you prepared to step8 of the tart crust recipe above, with a dinner knife or a spatula, spread the almond cream. *I don’t do a blind bake for a almond tart.
8. Bake for 20-30 mins until baked. If the edge of the crust started too dark, cover the edge with foil.

Note:
For almond tart (pear tart or lemon tart), I don’t do a blind bake. I simply skip step9 of the crust recipe.