A sweet afternoon

Besides my mood, I usually have two ways of deciding what I will be cooking. I either check cookbooks, blogs, newspapers food section, or sometimes, I just want to empty the fridge and the pantry.

So there I was with almost 1 pound of strawberries and one pound of mascarpone (...I still don't know why I ended up with so much mascarpone...). Anyway, I had to deal with that, so I thought of a strawberry tiramisu, or a mascarpone strawberry compote bread pudding, and there it was, I found it on Epicurious.com...the Strawberry Mascarpone tart. The picture was gorgeous and it looked like the perfect indulgence for a warm day.

The recipe seemed pretty easy,and consisted in 3 steps :

- make the dough

- make the mascarpone filling

- marinate the strawberries

The Dough :

I usually trust my pâte brisée because I have been doing it for so long. But, this time, it wasn't as good as usual, the end product was tough, which contrasted a lot with the delicate consistency of the mascarpone filling. I think I worked it too much. Since I don't have a pastry cutter, I used two knives to incorporate the butter in the flour, and that took me a while. Or, the other reason, might be the amount of water, the dough might have been too wet.

[ How to put the dough in the pan :Fold the dough in 4 and align the corner with the center of the mold, unfold]

Anyway, I think the right way was to follow the recipe, it is a mix of a pâte brisée an pâté sablée.

The mascarpone filling :

Really easy, it consisted on mixing the pound of mascarpone with some confectioners sugar (amount according to your taste), a teaspoon of lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest and a few dollops of vanilla extract.

The Strawberries:

Mix some sugar with the trimmed and halved strawberries and let sit for half an hour. Whatever juices are left, heat them with a few tablespoons of Port untill you have the consistency of maple syrup.

Assembling :

Then, you just have to assemble everything, once the dough is cool, spread the mascarpone filling on the shell, top with the strawberries and drizzle or brush with the Port glaze.

It was good and refreshing. But the mascarpone filling was really heavy, next time I'll use less mascarpone (2/3 pound might be enough), also, I'll mix blueberries with the strawberries.