Plum tarts with flaky sour cream pastry
Ready in 40 mins + chilling Cook time 20 mins Serves 8
SOUR CREAM PASTRY
200g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
1¾ cups flour
2 Tbsp sugar
½ cup sour cream or creme fraiche
TOPPING
8 plums, halved, destined and very thinly sliced
¼ cup sugar
2 tsp cornflour
Chilled whipped cream or icecream to
serve
To make the pastry, pulse butter, flour and sugar in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add sour cream or creme fraiche and continue to pulse until dough starts to form into a ball. If still crumbly, add a little cold water until it comes together. Press into a disk, wrap in waxed paper and chill for at least 20 minutes or freeze until needed.
To make the tarts, preheat oven to 180C fan bake and line an oven tray with baking paper. Divide the pastry into 8 equal pieces, form into balls and roll each out to a 14cm-diameter disk on a lightly floured board. Place on prepared oven tray and fold in the edges by 1cm to form a rim. Mix the sugar and cornflour together. Arrange overlapping plum slices inside the pastry bases and sprinkle each tart with ½ Tbsp of the sugar and cornflour mixture.
Bake until crisp and golden (20 minutes). Plum tarts can be cooked in advance and reheated for 5 minutes at 180C. Serve warm, accompanied by a bowl of whipped cream or vanilla icecream.
NOTE: This traditional pastry is the flakiest pastry I have come across, terrific for both sweet and savoury tarts (leave out the sugar for a savoury version). It’s a cinch to prepare, especially with a food processor, but if you prefer you can use 600g of your favourite sweet shortcrust pastry. These tarts travel well and are perfect for a picnic or pot-luck dessert.
Match this with ...
Sunshine Brewery Eton Mess Imperial Pastry Sour (440ml 8% $13)
You don’t get thighs like mine without the help of pastry. Piles of it. Flakey, filo, shortcrust, choux or butter puff, I bloody love the stuff. I also love plums and pastry and I definitely love beer and pastry. So there’s absolutely no way I’m not going to lose all control when confronted with a can of the new berry, vanilla and milk sugar-stacked sour from the kids at Sunshine Brewery. Intensely aromatic, plummy, lip-smackingly sour, yet generously creamy and heaving with flavour, it’s outrageously tasty with these tarts. sunshinebrewing.co.nz