Spinach, ricotta and mushroom tarts

I’ve always loved playing with dough. But curling the edges of a pie crust, cutting and weaving trellis pieces, or making sheet shapes out of pastry for the top of a pumpkin pie is about as far as I’ve gotten it. When I received a review copy The confectionery school: Sweet and savory cakes, tarts and delicacies to bake at home, I quickly realized how much more could be done. These cakes and tarts are works of art. For Julie Jones, pastry is her medium of choice and she has practiced the skills of creating masterpieces. There are recipes for different types of pastries such as shortcrust pastry, puff pastry, choux pastry, gluten-free and vegan, followed by tips for rolling, baking, blind baking and decorating. I liked the tip for blind baking a cake base with dough protruding beyond the edge of the cake tin. I’ve seen many pastry shells shrink below the top of pie pans over the years. By leaving excess pastry in place you will have a full height of pastry in the pie pan when you trim off the baked excess. And the suggestion for trimming the rim is to slide a vegetable peeler along it until it is level with the rim of the pie dish. Such a great idea. Another good tip is to use a pasta roller for extra smooth, thin dough. Many of the decorations are achieved through the use of very thin sheets of pastry, cut and shaped into patterns which are then glued with egg wash onto a very thin pastry cover, trimmed to the required size of the top. So smart. In some cases, the fill also becomes part of the design. The apple and rose tart consists of ruffled apple slice roses and pretty flower and leaf-shaped pieces of dough. For the little mango coconut cream tarts, the decorations are very thinly sliced ​​grapes and tiny coriander flowers. The pistachio tart with rhurbarb tiles featured on the book cover is particularly stunning with perfectly lined up rectangular pieces of rhubarb topped with a pretty profusion of swirling slices of apple, blackberries and biscuits. There are also savory pastries and the griddled greens, cauliflower and lemon triangles, which are made from sheet dough and baked until crispy, look delicious. It was the parquet look of the chicken, chorizo ​​and spinach pie that I had to try. I decided to limit my first attempt at this type of decorative pastry to smaller tartlets and fill mine with a veggie mix.

I made the shortcrust pastry and let it cool while I worked on the filling. I sautéed a mixture of mushrooms and set them aside. Next, spinach was sautéed with garlic and left to cool. I mixed the spinach with ricotta. Next, I rolled out half of the dough and cut and filled tartlet tins with overhanging dough. I cut parchment paper to fit each pan and fill them with pie weights for blind baking. After 20 minutes, the pie weights and parchment were removed and the tart shells baked for an additional 15 minutes. After cooling, the overhanging pastry edges were trimmed with a vegetable peeler and the pastry shells were cleaned of crumbs with a pastry brush. For the decorative tartlet bases, I rolled the other half of the dough through my pasta machine. I cut thin puff pastry into circles to fit the tops of the tarts. These base tops have been chilled to firm them up. Next I used more of the thin pasta machine rolled dough to make tile shapes. I measured and cut the rectangles and then placed them on the chilled thin pastry lids in parquet design. Working on parchment paper, I flipped the entire assembly onto another piece of parchment paper so I could cut the tiles right up to the edge of the bottom layer of dough. I flipped the entire assembly back to the parquet side up and refrigerated the finished tops. While the tops were chilling, I filled the tart shells with the ricotta and spinach mixture and topped them with mushrooms. By the end I felt like the day had slipped away and I only topped two cupcakes with the parquet effect. The other two received plain pastry toppers. The chilled pastry tops were placed and brushed with egg milk and the tarts returned to the oven until golden and crispy.

Let me tell you what I’ll do differently next time: I’m not going to try to do all of these steps in the same day. The dough can be prepared in advance and refrigerated. The tart bases can be blind baked and trimmed in advance. The thin pastry lids on which the decorative layer is placed can be pre-cut and chilled. And, of course, the filling can be done in advance. With everything prepped and ready, you can focus more time and attention on the fun, decorative layer. I loved learning these tips for working with pastries; I especially loved all the inspiration for amazing pastry art; and I look forward to getting more practice.

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