Lemon and cranberry (sunburst) tart tart

The photo of the Lemon and Cranberry Tart Tart in the Baking Bible is one of the prettiest in the book, in my opinion. The tart is primarily lemon with sunbursts of red from cranberry sauce. I've been waiting to make it since the Alpha Bakers started a year and a bit ago. Needless to say I wasn't confident that my cack-handed decoration skills would achieve the same level of beauty. 

Actually when I took my mini tarts out of the oven I looked at them and thought 'yes!'. Then I checked the photo in the book and thought 'ah...no'. I hadn't reproduced the cranberry fireworks of the original. But mine were still quite pretty so I wasn't too disappointed. The tart was also delicious and the unusual combination of lemon curd and cranberry sauce is inspired. I only wish I'd used more of the cranberry in the tart.

Rose's instructions for making pastry in the food processor invariably ask the baker to pulse the butter until it's the size of small peas. My impatient hand generally pulses straight past small pea stage to minuscule crumbs. This time I slowed down and gave peas a chance. Boy, was I peas'd to see those pea-sized lumps and now my mind is at peas.

Terrible puns aside, I was pleased to be using up the bag of mega-expensive frozen cranberries I have in my freezer from a previous baking project. Until I measured out 50g. Only about 550g to go.

I need to confess that I didn't make the lemon curd this week. Before Christmas I made lemon curd for some lemon jammies biscuits I made as gifts and I had a reasonable amount left over. This is my first week back at work and I was quite relieved to have one of the tart components already made, even though it might be a bit different to Rose's recipe. Because I only had a limited amount of curd I decided to make a couple of small tarts rather than one big one.

The pastry for this tart is a lovely almond-based sweet pastry and is very soft and buttery. Unfortunately this doesn't make it easy to roll out and you can see my first disastrous attempt to roll out and fill the tart tins. Hmmm... back to the fridge.

You are in a beautiful garden... There is no pastry...

Even after a night in the fridge the pastry melted really quickly in the heat of my kitchen. I worked a bit faster for the second one and it was slightly better looking. I made 3 tart shells from the pastry but I could only fill two with curd.

Straight from the oven and even my decorations on the edges of the pastry are looking quite pretty.

Next week we're making the perennial favourite, chocolate chip cookies.