Want to go all out for Father’s Day on September 1? Take a look at Tarts Anon.
Written by Masterchef’s first Dessert Master, Gareth Whitton, Tarts Anon is an ode to how a humble tart can be great. It’s not for the faint-hearted, but Whitton makes them seem approachable with plenty of tips, tricks and techniques explained - many learned the hard way in kitchens over the years.
His fascination with tarts began after losing his job as head pastry chef at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in Melbourne when the restaurant closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
While he had worked the last few years in the pastry section, he never considered himself a pastry chef, but after stacking shelves in a supermarket, he came to the conclusion a kitchen was where he belonged.
After some persistent suggestions from his wife, Catherine, they began doing some baking together at home.
‘‘I started out playing around with a few different techniques and recipes, but tarts became the go to.’’
When he started at Dinner in London he was surprised to find a classic custard tart on the menu, but came to understand that was the essence of Blumenthal’s food - classic, consistent, delicious and unique.
He swapped the supermarket job for one at Lune Croissanterie while baking tarts at the weekend and when demand got so high he set up his own kitchen in 2021, capturing the refinement of fine dining and the familiarity of the local bakery - all served up in a pizza box.
In his book he explains how each tart requires a pre-prepared shortcrust tart shell, the first recipe in the book, and the tarts roughly fall into custard-based, cake and hybrid tarts (cake tarts with a custard layer). At the end of the book is a trusty troubleshooting guide.
THE BOOK
This is an edited extract from Tarts Anon by Gareth Whitton and Catherine Way (Hardie Grant Books, RRP $50). Photography: © Armelle Habib 2024
Shortcrust pastry (pate brisee)
Makes 1 tart shell
200g plain (all-purpose) flour
100g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
3g salt
50g water
Method
Place the butter, flour and salt into a bowl - this process can also be done in a kitchen stand mixer or food processor.
Using your fingers, work the ingredients together until they resemble fine bread crumbs and no lumps of butter are present.
Add the water a little at a time (or in a steady stream if using a kitchen stand mixer), until it forms a firm but malleable mixture. If you used a food processor earlier, it’d be best to finish this one off by hand.
Move the dough to your benchtop and work into a puck-sized shape. Wrap with plastic wrap and allow to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
Preheat your oven to 180°C. Place the pastry on a piece of baking paper and cover with a second piece of baking paper. Using a rolling pin, roll out the pastry into a circle roughly 35cm wide, and about 3mm thick. Allow the pastry to firm up again in the fridge for at least an hour before lining the tin (if lining the tin immediately, be sure to rest it for at least an hour).
Remove one piece of baking paper from the pastry and drape the pastry over your tart tin. You may find this easier to do by using a rolling pin.
Press the pastry into the knuckles of the tart tin using the flats of your fingers.
Use a sharp knife to remove any excess trim from the edges of the pastry. Allow the pastry to sit for 15 minutes or so in the freezer for one final rest.
Take one large sheet of aluminium foil and gently press into the edges of the pastry shell, ensuring that the sheet is big enough to go over the edge and completely line the tart. Fill it to the brim with uncooked rice, then fold the foil gently back over the top and place into the oven.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the edges of the pastry are a nice medium-golden colour. Remove from the oven and sneak a look under the foil to check the doneness. Cook until the colour is consistent, then allow to cool at room temperature. Remove the foil and rice when cool enough to touch.
Tips: Mix the dough only to the point where it just comes together or it will be tough and shrink in the oven
Rolling out pastry: releasing and reattaching the baking paper several times during rolling will give a better result, start rolling from the middle of the dough outwards, constantly rotate the dough circle as you roll will ensure the shape remains consistent.
Pumpkin and spiced caramel tart
Let us assure you this is unlike any pumpkin pie you’ve had before, and that’s intentional. Originally, we created this tart for Halloween, but it’s become a popular Thanksgiving option for any American and Canadian expats living in Australia.
We find that people aren’t that adventurous when it comes to tart flavours in the shop (the more ‘‘out there’’ combos don’t sell as well as the classics), but the exception is this tart, genuinely due to word of mouth.
Also, we bully people into buying it because it’s that good. It’s one of the easiest tarts to make and one of the most special.
Ingredients
1 baked shortcrust pastry shell
Pumpkin puree
500g grey pumpkin (kabocha squash), or similar
Spiced caramel
2g salt
2g cinnamon
2g nutmeg
1g clove
1g ground ginger
270g Dulce de Leche
Pumpkin custard
280g pumpkin puree, left
65g Brown butter
240g pouring cream
115g golden caster (superfine) sugar
8g salt
200g egg yolk
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C fan forced.
Pumpkin puree
Cut the pumpkin into large wedges and remove the seeds. Place on a baking tray (sheet) lined with baking paper, then bake for 45 minutes, or until soft. Once the pumpkin is soft, remove from the oven and allow to cool. Then remove the skin and place in a blender and blitz until smooth for approximately 3 minutes. Set this mix aside.
Reduce the oven heat to 125°C to preheat for baking the tart.
Spiced caramel
Next, mix the spices and salt into the dulce de leche with a maryse spatula, and spread over the base of the pastry shell.
Pumpkin custard
Add the pumpkin puree, brown butter, cream, sugar and salt to a large saucepan and bring to a simmer, then remove from heat immediately. To temper the egg yolks, add them to a mixing bowl and whisk in a small amount of the hot pumpkin mixture until well incorporated. Add the remaining pumpkin mixture and blend with a hand-held blender until shiny and smooth — to prevent any air from being incorporated into the mix, keep the head of the blender underneath the surface. Decant into a jug to use straight away — you want to keep it as warm as possible to ensure the mixture cooks evenly in the oven.
To bake
Place the prepared tart shell into the oven and pour the custard over the caramel layer. Bake for 30 minutes or until the custard is slightly wobbly in the centre, then remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Once the custard has completely cooled, remove the tart from the tin and cut into slices with a hot, sharp knife.
Cheese and bacon tart
This tart took longer to get right than any other on the menu. The first versions were way too intense; incorporating all the required, but heavy, elements of a tart and achieving a balance of flavour and a final product that was portionable at room temperature was almost impossibly hard.
It needed to be textural, not just a tray bake held together by a ‘‘bunch of knackered eggs’’ (as Gareth would say). But something that required hours of setting was not going to be feasible in the production kitchen.
After many iterations, here is the final recipe - it’s so good that it seems unlikely it will ever change again.
Ingredients
1 × baked shortcrust pastry shell
Chives, finely chopped, for garnishing
Leek and bacon cake batter
200g leek, sliced into 2mm rounds
200g smoked speck (dry-cured pork belly) or pancetta/hickory-cured bacon, cut into cubes
30g maple syrup
30g soft brown sugar
90g natural almond meal
35g plain (all-purpose) flour
2½g baking powder
5g salt
90g egg
60g brown butter (see below)
olive oil, for frying
Gruyere custard
110g gruyere cheese
85g egg yolk
250g pouring (whipping) cream
2g salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 165°C fan forced.
Leek and bacon cake batter: Place a large pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Season the water with a good amount of salt, about 15g per 1litre (4 cups) of water. Blanch the sliced leeks in the salted boiling water for 15 seconds. Drain and refresh in iced water, then squeeze out the water from the leeks — you should have about 130g of leek left.
Add some olive oil to a frying pan and heat on high until it starts to smoke. Add the speck and cook until evenly caramelised on all sides, then remove from the pan and discard the oil. Place the same pan over medium heat and add the maple syrup and the brown sugar. Bring this to a thick and bubbly caramel then return the drained speck pieces. Cook for one minute or until the edges of the speck start to look a little candied. Drain any excess caramel and set aside.
To make the batter, weigh the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir them together. Add the eggs to the mixing bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and mix on low speed until combined (or do so by hand).
Melt the brown butter in a saucepan. You want this to be warm enough so that the liquid doesn’t cool down too quickly, but cool enough so that it doesn’t develop any burnt characteristics. If the butter is too hot, it will fry the egg mixture as you add it, so a thermometer is useful (we aim for roughly 100°C).
Once the butter comes up to temperature, slowly pour it into the whisked eggs while mixing (or add little by little if whisking by hand). Ensure that the mixture is well emulsified, as this will ensure that the butter doesn’t bleed out later giving the cake a greasy texture. Then add in the dry ingredients and mix until well combined, ensuring that there are no lumps suspended throughout the batter.
Vigorously mix the leek and speck into the cake batter by hand to ensure that the leek has been fully distributed and the speck pieces aren’t sticking to one another.
To bake
Pour the batter into the pastry shell. Bake the tart for about 18 minutes, or until the crust is an even golden brown and the centre of the tart is firm. Remove from the oven and allow to cool inside the tin.
Using the back of a spoon, press down firmly on any areas where the cake has risen unevenly so that the surface is flat.
Gruyere custard: Grate the cheese and mix with the egg yolks in a measuring jug, then set aside. Bring the cream and salt to a boil in a saucepan over medium–high heat, then pour it over the egg and cheese. Using a hand-held blender, blitz the custard until it is smooth and glossy. Pour the custard on top of the cake layer, and bake in the oven for 15 minutes, or until it is set.
To finish: Allow to cool at room temperature, then remove the tart from the tin. Using a hot sharp knife, portion the tart into slices. Sprinkle an even layer of the cut chives over the top of the tart.
Brown butter
500g unsalted butter
Place the butter into a medium saucepan over medium heat. Once completely melted, allow the butter to simmer gently until it begins to foam. Continue to cook, stirring with a whisk on occasion to prevent burning on the bottom of the saucepan. Once the butter starts to expand, small flecks of browned milk solids appear and the fizzing sound of the butter stops, remove it from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
Strain through a fine sieve to remove the milk solids (this is optional, the milk solids won’t change the flavour or texture). Store this in a container in the fridge until needed.
Signature pear tart
This is the tart that started it all in lockdown, before Tarts Anon even existed. It’s the bake that made us think ‘Maybe we should sell these’. It’s quite a simple tart in its conception: layers of pear and frangipane baked in a shortcrust pastry shell.
This tart was inspired by one of the first dishes Gareth ever made as a chef - a frangipane and plum tart. We’ve simply switched the plums for pears.
You can serve this with the bells and whistles if you want (vanilla ice cream or cream), but we genuinely believe this tart is perfect as it is.
Ingredients
1 baked shortcrust pastry shell
3 green Packham pears
icing (confectioner’s sugar), for dusting
Almond cake batter
140g natural almond meal
75g plain (all-purpose) flour
3g baking powder
2g salt
185g caster (superfine) sugar
160g egg
160g brown butter (see below)
Method
Preheat the oven to 165°C fan-forced.
Use an apple corer to remove the core from two of the pears and slice thinly, lengthways, on a sharp mandolin. Cut the third pear into quarters lengthways and use a knife to cut the core out.
Almond cake batter
Weigh the dry ingredients, except the sugar, in a bowl and stir together. Add the eggs and sugar to a separate mixing bowl. Either with a whisk or a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, slowly combine until the sugar has dissolved. You do not want to incorporate any air at this stage, as it tends to separate when the butter is added and forms a foamy crust, so keep the speed low.
Melt the brown butter in a saucepan. You want this to be warm enough so that the liquid doesn’t cool down too quickly, but cool enough so that it doesn’t develop any burnt characteristics. If the butter is too hot, it can also fry the egg mixture as you add it, so a thermometer is useful (we aim for roughly 100°C).
Once the butter comes up to temperature, slowly pour it into the egg and sugar mixture (or add little by little, if whisking by hand). Ensure that the mixture is well emulsified, as this will prevent the butter from bleeding out later, giving the cake a greasy texture. Finally, mix in the dry ingredients, making sure that there are no lumps suspended throughout the batter.
To assemble and bake
Pour a thin layer of the almond batter (approximately one-third of the recipe) into the pastry shell. Arrange the slices of pear in an overlapping layer over the batter, then pour another thin layer of almond batter over the top of this. It is important to work quickly at this time as the batter will stiffen as it cools. Add a second layer of pear and then a final layer of batter. Once the last of the batter is inside the pastry shell, use a mandolin to carefully slice the quartered pear into slightly thicker pieces and arrange 10 pieces on top so they fan out with the pointed ends of the pear facing the centre.
Place the tart into the oven and bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until the crust is an even golden brown and the centre of the tart is firm. Remove from the oven and allow to cool inside the tin.
Once cooled, remove the tart from the tin. Portion the tart into slices with a sharp knife and dust lightly with icing sugar.
