Sour Cherry Tart
- Total Time
- 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 2 hours' refrigeration
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
Ingredients
- About ¾ cup flour (4 ounces)
- ½teaspoon sugar
- ⅛teaspoon salt
- ¾stick (3 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces
- 3tablespoons ice-cold water
- 1¼pounds sour cherries, pitted
- 2tablespoons minute tapioca
- ¾cup sugar
- ¼teaspoon almond extract
- ¼cup almonds ground in a food processor with 1 tablespoon sugar
The Pate Brisee (enough for 1 11-inch Tart)
The Filling
Preparation
- Step 1
For the pate brisee, place the flour, sugar, salt and butter pieces in owl and crush the butter into the dry ingredients with the tips of your fingers until combined somewhat but with pieces of butter still visible in the mixture. Add the ice water and stir with a fork just until the mixture holds together. Gather it up, pressing it between your hands to flatten it and make it round, and wrap it in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for one hour.
- Step 2
Rub a small amount of flour into a pastry cloth and roll the dough into a very thin circle, about 12½ inches in diameter. Roll the dough onto the rolling pin and gently fit it into the bottom and up the sides of an 11-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough against the sides of the pan to fill in any holes and make it adhere to the metal. Remove any excess overhanging dough by rolling the rolling pin across the top of the pan. Refrigerate the tart shell for one hour.
- Step 3
Meanwhile, in a bowl combine the cherries, tapioca, sugar and almond extract. Sprinkle the ground almond-sugar mixture in the pastry shell and arrange the cherry mixture on top. Place the tart pan on a cookie sheet and bake in a 400-degree oven for one to one-and-a-quarter hours, until the dough is nicely browned. Unmold and serve with strong coffee.
Private Notes
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Comments
I don't have an owl for step one. And I'm not sure how I would put the pieces in one if I had one. Does anyone have any tips. I'm going to try this recipe and use a bowl instead.
Forgot to add that I baked it at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.
I used two cans of cherries packed in water for a 9 inch tart.
I made this with canned sour cherries, a 9 inch tart shell, and no ground almonds. It was very good served warm with bourbon vanilla bean ice cream. I sprinkled some sliced almonds on top instead.
This was a great discovery when my husband and a kid returned from the farmer’s market with some seriously sour cherries. I didn’t reduce the sugar by much as the cherries were so sour but I definitely could have taken more away. I used a 9-inch pie pan because that’s what I had. The crust was very thin, not sure how I could have rolled it to fit the recommended size. That said — the pate brisee was simple to make and the pastry shell came out perfectly (but if making again I might take other suggestions to increase salt). Overall a huge winner and will now seek out the sour cherries myself when in season to make this yearly.
We found tart cherries at the farmers market. I also had half a Julia Childs’ pie crust recipe in my frig. I made the tart with Julia’s pastry. I also doubled the tapioca because my cherries were quite juicy. I baked it as directed, but I put apiece of tin foil on top of the pie for about half the time. It was delicious,
Amazing - delicate and a perfect mixture of sweet and tart. I used tart cherries I'd gleaned in the summer and frozen, defrosting before use. I followed the recipe exactly but only had a 9" tart pan. Since other bakers commented on the scant dough and filling, I made the dough and filling as written, and the results perfectly fit the 9" pan. One problem: the minute tapioca didn't dissolve fully, so next time I will heat the macerated cherry juice with the tapioca until dissolved.