Strawberry Tart with Basil Cream

I love this tart. In fact I just plain ol’ love pastries so any tart is good for me. The best thing about something like this is that the ingredients are minimal and as long as you keep some refrigerated puff pastry in your freezer you can whip something like this up quickly and customize it to whatever fruit you have on hand. I am a sucker for fresh basil so that’s why I made this particular tart but you can mix fresh mint into your cream, or go wild and experiment with spices and flavors. For example, I see an awesome banana tart with fresh cream whipped with cinnamon and nutmeg and drizzled with some caramel or chocolate sauce (or both!) See how easy that was? Now it’s your turn 🙂

1 sheet puff pastry, thawed

1 cup heavy cream

4 or 5 T powdered sugar

1/3 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 pint strawberries

Preheat oven to 350*. Roll out pastry sheet on a floured surface until thin, about the size of a square foot. I do this because I have a great 14-inch square-shaped baking sheet, but you can do a rectangle shape if you like. Trim about an inch off the edges of the sheet and use a little water to build the edges up a bit.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper and place the sheet on top. Make sure you prick the pastry with a fork so the air can flow. If you’ve ever missed this step you’ll know the pastry will balloon up. It’s fixable for this tart but not ideal.

Bake for 20 minutes then allow to cool completely.

While the pastry sheet is cooling you can whip up the cream using a mixmaster or electric beaters with the powdered sugar until it’s set and just beginning to form soft peaks. Gently fold in the basil (save some for sprinkling on top of the tart).

Spreading the cream might be a little hard if it gets too stiff (mine did) and especially if the shell wasn’t pricked with a fork prior to baking and is breaking up (guilty), so I used a small ice cream scoop to place blobs of the cream all over the pastry. Then I used a slightly wet silicone spreader to gently spread the cream out. Mine came out pretty thick but I really liked it anyway.

Slice the strawberries and place them all over the top of the tart. I put mine in rows, overlapping each edge, covering the whole thing. You can put your strawberries on however you like.

Sprinkle any remaining bits of fresh basil on the top.

Enjoy!

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