I made my first ever tart this week!

The first thing I did was make the crust. It was a variation of the basic flaky pastry that we’ve been using so far. I also tried my hand at the vodka trick; the liquid in the crust was made my substituting half of the water for vodka. It’s a good thing I did this, because I think I might’ve added a little too much liquid to the pastry.

It was surprisingly easy to roll out the pastry. I then pressed it into the tart pan and folded over the edges in order to make a doubly-thick crust around the sides, as seen here:

The crust was frozen for half and hour and then pre-baked for 45 minutes. Boom:

 

The next part of the process was to make the white chocolate mousse. I used a double boiler method to prevent scorching while melting the white chocolate. After melting, the white chocolate mixture was set aside to cool.

In the meantime, I beat the egg whites and the whipping cream mixture.

 

These were each folded into the melted white chocolate. This mousse was then poured into the tart shell and left in the fridge to chill.

 

This is where the decoration part of the tart began. I cut the 16 oz of strawberries into thin slices and carefully arranged them into concentric circles on top of the mousse.

I thought that the tart needed a little contrast in color, so I thought it would be a good idea to put some dark chocolate on there. I’ve always wanted to try making decorations out of chocolate drizzle, so I melted some semi-sweet chocolate pieces with shortening over a double boiler and made a makeshift piping bag.

I played around with some shapes and left them to cool/harden.

 

And then arranged them on top of the tart. I finished it off with the tart strawberry-jam-and-lemon-juice glaze, which gave the tart a shiny look.

I’m happy with how it turned out!I was a little nervous about it, but everything went pretty smoothly and I think the final product looks nice. I hope it tastes good. I tasted the chocolate mousse and it was super sweet, so I’m hoping that the strawberries and the glaze add a little tartness to counteract the overwhelming sweetness.