Plum and Blackberry Tartlets

I baked those beauties for the final shoot of the food styling course I attended a while ago. It has been an amazing experience and opportunity to learn from the best about food photography and food styling.

The latest assignment and a great idea to show off what we learnt was to create a recipe, bake, style and let a professional photograph take pictures!

My idea was to create a cozy, yet dramatic winter look, and that’s the results!

Those tarts are a perfect treat for a cold evening, when all you want to do is stay inside, under the blanket, watch Friends and drink endless amount of lemon tea.

You can serve them as an elegant winter dessert as well, still warm with scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.

Plum Tartlets

(Makes around 10 tartlets)

 Pâte sucrée 

From Desserts by Pierre Hermé

300 g unsalted butter, cut into pieces

2 eggs

190 g icing sugar

60 g ground almonds

1 vanilla bean, scrapped

500 g flour

1 tsp salt

Topping

1 kg  plums

1 pack  blackberries

Thyme for decoration

Glaze 

100 g blackcurrant jam  + 2 tbsp water

1 tsp  cinnamon

Combine  ground almonds with sugar and vanilla bean.Add butter and in a mixer bowl, and cream until soft.When butter is ready, add sugar mix.

Mix eggs in separate bowl, and add them slowly to butter mix. It will looks weirdly lumpy, but don't you worry my friend! It will all come together when you add flour.

Add flour and salt to our mix, really slowly. I would recommend to do it in about 3 times.

Keep mixing our lovely pâte sucrée, until nice and smooth.

Take it out from the bowl, shape the dough into round shape and wrap it up with cling film.

Leave in the fridge for around 3 hours, if you have no time just put it in the freezer for 15-30 minutes  and roll out the pastry to a 3 mm thick, and start lining your tartlets molds.

Preheat the oven to 180°C, and when you ready to bake, put baking paper on the top of  the dough and fill up tartlets with rice or beans – that will prevent pastry from rising.

Bake tartlets for around 15 minutes.

To finish 

When tartlets are still into oven, cut plums into really thin wedges. I manage to get  8-10 pieces from one plum.

Now just cover baked tartlets with plums, and bake for another 15 minutes.

For shiny glaze all you need to do is to heat jam, water and cinnamon together, until melted.

Let it cool for few minutes, and glaze tartlets, using pastry brush.

Decorate with blackberries and fresh thyme.

 Pictures by Adrian Lawrence, Styling by me .