Rhubarb-Bottom, Strawberry-Top Tart | Baking with Dorie

Strawberry and rhubarb are bountiful and good-looking in the farmers market. I bake Dorie’s rhubarb-bottom, strawberry-top tart from her new book, Baking with Dorie. Can’t help to compare the rhubarb-bottom, strawberry-top tart with the strawberry rhubarb tart and the classic fruit tart with strawberry, all Dorie’s recipes.

There are a few steps in making the rhubarb-bottom, strawberry-top tart. First, make the strawberry pastry cream. Poach the rhubarb. Then assemble the tart with the topping. Don’t forget: there is a sweet crust to make for the base. These are similar procedures in making all the tarts mentioned above.

Make the pastry cream: The major difference, process-wise, has to do with the strawberry pastry cream. For some reasons, the custard (whisking and drizzling in hot milk into the mixture of egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch and salt), cuddled. Maybe I didn’t whisk it vigorously enough. So I had to make the cream twice. It’s not a good start. In the second attempt, I got the custard with the right texture. Then I proceeded to combine it with the strawberry puree.

However, the color of strawberry pastry cream turns out quite dull. It needs to be brightened with a red food coloring. Still, I don’t know whether the pinkish tone is an improvement. In addition, the cream has a soft wobbling texture even after chilling in the fridge for a few hours.

Poach the rhubarb: Bring water and sugar (almost one-to-one ratio) to a boil. Then drop in slices of rhubarb and poach for 1 minute. The end result is a slightly sweetened rhubarb with a crunch to it.

Assemble the tart: Pieces of rhubarb go to the bottom of the sweet tart crust. Spread the strawberry pastry cream to fill the tart and smooth the top. Next, arrange strawberry pieces in whatever pattern that’s pleasing to you. The finishing touches include a squirt of lime juice and a sprinkle of the rhubarb syrup over the berries.

In conclusion, among all the tarts, the rhubarb-bottom strawberry top, the regular strawberry rhubarb tart and the classic, I like this one the least. There are several reasons that it’s at the bottom of the heap. The strawberry pastry cream does not add much, except more work, and the poached rhubarb is more raw than I’d like. Treating the pastry cream like it’s a berry pudding does not make me like it better!

A word on the sweet tart dough: I like the classic sweet tart dough in the other two recipes better. The sweet tart dough here uses 40 grams of confectioners’ sugar and two tablespoons of sugar. By a wide margin, I prefer the classic tart crust, which is more tender, with all confectioners’ and no granulated sugar. To me, there is a noticeable difference in texture. That’s why the classic sweet tart dough has been my go-to for a long time.