Strawberry Tart, Hermé’s Sweet Pastry — Tarte aux fraises, pâte sablée Hermé

Bleu, blue for boys

or

Rose, pink for girls

Which one do you prefer? It is hard sometimes to decide, don’t you think? I can be the real queen of undecisiveness! So my idea was easy. I don’t have to choose, there is blue for boys and pink for girls. Such a cliché!

Tarte aux fraises

Again?

Another one?

My apologies but I have 2 reasons, or 3 for this tart.

1- This was the dessert I baked for the lovely dinner made by Helen from Beyond Salmon last night at her house: chickpeas stew, verde salsa and grilled blue fish followed a very tasty fennel&grapefruit with greens salad. I do not often have the opportunity to meet another food blogger (since many of the ones I am a regular reader of seem to all congregate on the West Coast of the United States, overseas or in France), so I was delighted to get this opportunity. And in 1 word, it was superb! Like Tea describing it here, I experienced a nice happy moment. Un petit moment de bonheur!

2- I wanted to try Pierre Hermé’s pâte sablée instead of the puff pastry I used for my recipe here.

3- Strawberry month, isn’t it?
Ivonne worked on lemony dishes with great looking recipes on her blog, I am just inspired by the red of the strawberries and raspberries.

Pierre Hermé’s Pâte Sablée from Plaisirs Sucrés

I had made pâte sablée (sweet dough) before of course but was just curious to try the one I found in my cookbook Plaisirs Sucrés. I looked at this as a scientific experience and a lab test and did follow the steps to the letter (à la lettre), because my point was to try to answer this question: does it work? Result: it did. Merci Mr Hermé, your dough is quite good. I was new to the concept of adding almond flour in it.

Strawberry Tart, Hermé’s Sweet Pastry

For 2 tarts (10.5″ diameter mold)

Note: For the purpose of accuracy and since the original recipe measurements were in grams, I am giving the measurements in ounces instead of cups so that they fully translate the original ones. I omitted a grated vanilla bean as well.

You need:

  • 8.8 oz flour
  • 3.5 oz confectioner’s sugar
  • 1 egg (large)
  • 2.5 oz butter (room temperature)
  • 1 oz almond flour
  • 2 pinch of salt


Steps:

  • Sieve the confectioner’s sugar and flour, separately.
  • In a food processor, mix together the egg and butter.
  • Add the confectioner’s sugar, then the almond flour. Mix together.
  • Then add the salt and the flour. When the dough detaches from the bowl, stop as it is ready.
  • Flatten your dough and cover it, to place in the fridge for a minimum of 1 to 2 hours.
  • Roll it and place it in a buttered mold (mine is rectangular, 4.5″x 14″) and place in the fridge again for 30 mns.
  • Take it out an prick some holes at the bottom before placing it again for 30 mns.
  • Cook it in a preheated oven at 350 C for 15 mns (you can cover the dough with parchment paper and a weight to prevent it from rising if you like, I skipped this step and it worked fine).
Le coin français
Tarte aux fraises, pâte sablée Hermé

Ces proportions sont pour deux tartes (mon moule rectangulaire mesure 11 x 35 cm, ou un moule de 26 cm de diamètre).

Ingrédients :

  • 250 g farine
  • 100 g sucre glace
  • 1 oeuf
  • 150 g beurre (température ambiante)
  • 30 g poudre d’amandes
  • 2 pincées de sel


Étapes :

  • Tamisez le sucre glace et la farine, séparément.
  • Mélangez l’oeuf et le beurre dans un robot.
  • Ajoutez le sucre glace, puis la poudre d’amandes.
  • Continuez avec le sel et la farine. Mixez. Lorsque la pâte se détache du bol, elle est prête.
  • Formez-la en boule et aplatissez-la.
  • Couvrez et mettez-la au réfrigerateur (2 heures).
  • Une fois prête à être utilisée, garnissez un moule beurré et remettez au frigo pendant 30 mns.
  • Sortez le moule et piquez le fond avec une fourchette avant de remettre au frigo pour à nouveau 30 mns.
  • Cuisez la pâte à blanc dans un four préchauffé à 180 C, pendant 15 mns.

Ok, I gave up, I chose pink!

Posted in Dessert, French Inspired, Fruit, Tarts

34 comments

  1. La bleue met en valeur la pâte, la rose fait ressortir les fraises (magnifique): à choisir, je prends la tarte!! Je fantasme que la crème sous les fraises est légèrement citronnée.. je craque!!

  2. Hi Bea,

    Thank you so much for coming over for dinner last night. It was so great to meet you and P.

    The pictures of the tart look amazing. I just feel bad that all your readers can’t taste this incredible dessert. As good as it looks, it tastes even better!

    And now that I am armed with your recipe, I can try the sweet tart dough 🙂

    Cheers,
    -Helen

  3. Franck qui me vend mes fruits et légumes m’a dit ce matin en confidence, les fraises arrivent la semaine prochaine mais il n’y en aura pas pour tout le monde… donc la semaine prochaine va y avoir baston mais j’aurais mes fraises j’ai une petite recette de tarte à tester !!!

  4. Je ne vais plus venir lire ton blog, il me fait trop de mal… Toutes ces fraises là… j’ai testé ton crumble (je mettrai ça bientôt sur ma feille de chou) et si tout est aussi bon, je suis dans de beaux draps !

  5. You are so sweet! Sweeter than the tart! I can’t believe the dinner that Helen made … any leftovers for me???

    As for me … I prefer pink for girls … and I nice big piece of your tart thank you very much!

    Bonne nuit!

  6. Bea,
    Miam miam indeed! I think the pink background works better – and isn’t Hermé’s recipe great! I always try to have some in the freezer!

  7. What a mouth watering delight this recipe appears to be, wish I could pluck it out of the screen & have some now! Maybe I will have to settle for making it myself one day

  8. You chose wisely, Bea – pink is soooo much better;) I still can’t find nice and flavoursome strawberries here, but in a month or so I’ll be back printing out all your strawberry recipes!!

  9. Thanks all. Merci beaucoup! Vive les fraises. Hope the strawberry season starts soon for everyone!

  10. Bonjour! C’est pour vous dire que j’ai presente votre joli tarte aux fraises sur mon blog (mais j’y ai ecrit au japonais).Votre tate aux frises,ca me sent tres tres bon!

  11. Merci Christelle!

    Bonjour cacacavien, c’est tres gentil merci. j’ai vu le site mais je ne parle pas japonais 😉 Dommage!!

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  13. Thank you for posting this recipe but it seems that your crust recipe is not correct. Shoudn’t it be:

    5 oz butter
    3/4 (6 oz) cup confectioners sugar
    1/4 (2 oz) cup finely ground almonds
    1/4 tsp salt
    1/4 tsp ground vanilla pulp
    1 egg
    1 3/4 cup (14 oz) ap flour

    Best wishes!

  14. If you change your amount of butter to 2.5 oz (rather than 5.2) – your recipe will be correct!

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  16. I’m afraid your earlier commenter, Sophia, is not correct. based o Pierre Herme’s recipe, the correct amount of butter should be 150g which converts to 5.2 oz, as you originally posted. That is, 2.5 oz of butter is incorrect. The proportion of fat to flour for tart shell should always be at least half fat to flour. Any less than that and you’d get a piece of rock for your pastry.

  17. Look at a 4oz bar of chocolate and you will see it weights 113 grams, so an 8TBS stick of butter = 113g or 14g per TBS, so I would use 11Tbs of butter to equal the 150g.

  18. I would like to know the history of Tarte aux fraises please if you can

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