Bourke Street Bakery's Ginger Brulee Tarts

Bourke Street Bakery is a popular bakery located in Surry Hills, Sydney. It is famous for many reasons, but mainly because of their pastries and pies.

Everyone has their favourites and for me they are the pork and fennel sausage rolls and the ginger brulee tarts. Unfortunately, I live quite far away from the bakery - with a round trip taking an hour - but thanks to their fabulous cookbook which has in it every single recipe for everything sold in their bakery, I can now replicate my favourites at home.

I started with some relatively simple recipes such as Flourless Chocolate Cake, Carrot Cake and Chocolate Sour Cherry Cookies before moving to the more complicated ones. None of the recipes have failed me and I have achieved great results.

Last weekend I was ready to tackle their famous sweet shortcrust pastry which is notoriously hard to replicate. It has a rustic look, is slightly darker than the usual shortcrust pastry and it's exceptionally buttery and flaky.

It has two full page of instructions - just for the pastry - and one more page for the ginger brulee filling. It took me almost a full day, partly due to the resting time, but it's worth the effort. The brulee was set perfectly, the pastry didn't shrink and the result was exactly how I remembered it to be from the bakery. Follow the instructions to a tee and you will succeed.

However, it's so bad for my diet... After making two batches of these tarts - Ginger Brulee and Vanilla Brulee with Strawberry Puree (I will blog about it later) - I saw myself having a brulee diet: breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, after dinner dessert. Five brulee tarts a day! So don't complain I didn't warn you: Do not bake these tarts unless you are up for the brulee diet! You simply can't stop picking one after another when the tarts are sitting in the kitchen.

Ginger Brulee Tarts Recipe
(Adapted from Bourke Street Bakery cookbook)
Makes 20

Bourke Street Bakery - "The idea behind this tart came about many years ago when I was travelling through the Indian Himalayas. It was here that I first tasted the flavours of masala chai, the spiced milk tea that is drunk in all chai shops in India. At first I wanted to make a custard flavoured with these spices and years later, when the Bakery opened its doors, I did, only by then it had morphed into a chai spiced brulee. Although we call it the ginger brulee tart, it actually contains some of the spices commonly used in masala chai and is a popular favourite at the bakery. The tart filling is one of the most challenging in the book - the brulee filling is easy to overcook and easy to undercook. This version of the filling uses pouring (single) cream with a 35 % fat content, which results in a softer filling than the one we produce at the Bakery, where we use a cream with 45% fat that is often hard to find in shops."

Ingredients

720 ml (25 fl oz) pouring (whipping) cream (35% fat)
5 cm (2 inch) piece ginger, finely sliced
1 cardamom pod, bruised
1/2 cinnamon stick
10 egg yolks
80 g (2 3/4 oz / 1/3 cup) caster (superfine) sugar, plus extra for burning
1 quantity sweet shortcrust pastry (recipe follows)
1 1/2 tbsp pistachio, chopped

Method

1. Put the cream into a saucepan over high heat and add the ginger, cardamom and cinnamon stick. As soon as it boils, remove from the heat, pour into a large container or bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator overnight for the flavours to infuse.
2. Reheat the infused cream in a saucepan over medium-high heat, bring to simmering point, then remove from the heat. Set aside until needed.
3. Place the egg yolks in a stainless steel bowl and use a whisk to combine. Add the sugar and continue whisking for about 30 seconds, or until the sugar has dissolved. Pour the warmed cream through a fine sieve, discarding the spices, then pour the cream into the egg yolk mixture, whisking well to combine.
4. Put the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, making sure the base of the bowl does not touch the water, and continue stirring with a whisk for about 10-15 minutes, or until the mixture is smooth and thick, scraping down the sides of the bowl regularly with a rubber spatula. It is important to keep stirring at all times or the mixture will curdle. Remove the bowl from the heat and whisk briskly for about 2 minutes to cool it quickly. Over the next 1 hour, whisk the mixture every 10 minutes until cooled. Use a rubber spatula to clean the side of the bowl thoroughly and place plastic wrap directly on top of the mixture refrigerate overnight to set.
5. Roll out the pastry and use it to line twenty 8 cm (3 1/4 inch) round fluted loose-based tart tins. Set the pastry cases in the freezer for at least 20 minutes.
6. Blind bake the tart cases in a preheated 200C (400F) oven for 20-25 minutes, or until golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
7. Pipe the custard into the tart shells with a piping (icing) bag fitted with a plain nozzle - you should just slightly overfill the filling in each one. With a small pallet knife, scrape the custard to be flush with the top of the tart shell. Place in the refrigerator to set for 4 hours.
8. Sprinkle about 1 tsp caster sugar over the top of each tart and burn with a blowtorch to caramelise the top. Sprinkle a few pistachios on top to serve.

Variation: If you prefer, you can omit the blowtorch step and serve the tarts simply with the ginger custard - just sprinkle a few pistachios directly onto the custard to serve.

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry (Pate Brisee)
Makes 1 quantity

Bourke Street Bakery - "The following recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry will leave you with a slightly uneven edge around the rim of the tin when you line it, resulting in a tart that looks rustic and home-made, which is what we aim for at Bourke Street Bakery. If you are looking for a perfectly even effect, this is not the correct recipe to use. The fact that this dough has water in it means it will shrink as the water evaporates during baking; the following method is to help counteract this shrinkage. This recipe makes enough pastry for twenty 8 cm (3 1/4 inch) tarts with a little left-over. The number of tarts is going to vary from baker to baker depending on how thin the pastry is rolled. The pastry can be frozen for up to 2 months, so it makes sense to line all the shells, freeze them and simply blind bake them as you need them."

Ingredients

400 g (14 oz) unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1.5 cm (5/8 inch) cubes
20 ml (1/2 fl oz / 1 tbsp) vinegar, chilled
100 g (3 1/2 oz) caster (superfine) sugar, chilled
170 ml (5 1/2 fl oz / 2/3 cup) water, chilled
665 g (1 lb 7 1/2 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour, chilled
5 g (1/8 oz / 1 tsp) salt

Method

1. Remove the butter from the refrigerator 20 minutes before you start mixing - the butter should be just just soft but still very cold so it doesn't melt through the pastry while mixing.
2. Put the vinegar and sugar in a bowl and add the water, stirring well. Set aside for 10 minutes, then stir again to completely dissolve the sugar.
3. If you are mixing the dough by hand, mix together the flour and salt in a large bowl and toss through the butter. Using your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour to partly combine.
4. If you are using a food processor, put the flour and salt in the bowl of the food processor and add the butter, pulsing in 1-second bursts about three or four times to partly combine.
5. You should now have a floury mix through which you can see squashed pieces of butter. Turn out onto a clean work surface and gather together. Sprinkle over the sugar mixture and use the palm of your hand to smear the mixture away from you across the work surface (a pastry scraper is a useful tool to use for this step). Gather together again and repeat this smearing process twice more before gathering the dough again. You may need to smear once or twice more to bring it together - you should still be able to see streaks of butter marbled through the pastry; this gives it a slightly flaky texture to the final product. Divide the dough into two even-sized portions and shape into two round, flat discs about 2 cm (3/4 inch) thick. Wrap each disc in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

   

6. Remove the pastry dough from the refrigerator 20 minutes before you wish to roll it. Sprinkle a little flour on the bench and rub a little flour over a rolling pin. Working form the centre of the pastry, gently roll the dough away from you, then turn the dough about 30 degrees and roll out again. Repeat this process until you have a flat round disc, about 3 mm (1/8 inch) thick. Sprinkle extra flour over the bench and rolling pin as needed, but try to use it as sparingly as possible - if too much is absorbed into the pastry it will result in a dough with poor flavour and texture. Bear in mind that you are trying to flatten the pastry into a disc, not ferociously stretch it out in all directions. Stretching will only cause the pastry to shrink excessively when baking. transfer the pastry to a tray and place in the refrigerator, covered in plastic wrap, for at least 2 hours to allow the gluten to relax.

   

7. At Bourke Street Bakery, we prefer to use loose-based tart tins and moulds, which have sides that are at an angle of about 90 degrees to the base. The right angle offers more support than sloping sides and makes it easier to remove a fragile tart. Again, it is important not to stretch the dough when lining the tins.
8. Brush twenty 8cm (3 1/4 inch) individual tart tins with a little butter. Cut the pastry using a round pastry cutter with an 11 cm (4 1/4 inch) diameter. Place the pastry on top of the mould ensuring it is in the centre and use use your fingers to gently push the pastry into the mould, moving around the rim until all of the pastry has been inserted - you should now have about 1 cm (1/2 inch) of dough hanging over the sides.

   

9. Use your index finger and thumb to work your way around the edge, forcing the pastry into the mould so that little or no pastry is left protruding. Where the upright edge of the pastry meets the base there should be a sharp angle where is has been firmly forced into the corner - this method of lining the tin is to counteract the pastry shrinking once baked.

   

10. Set the pastry cases aside to rest for at least 2o minutes in the freezer so that the gluten relaxes and holds its shape when you line it with foil.



11. Once the tart has been lined and rested, most recipes will call for it to be blind baked. Blind baking pastry simply means you need to pre-bake the pastry before filling it, to ensure the base is crisp and cooked through. If you own a pizza stone this will work perfectly, as long as it is heated well and the pastry tin is placed directly on the stone.
12. Preheat the oven to 200C (400F). Line the pastry with a double layer of aluminium foil, making sure the foil is pushed well into the corners. Pour in some baking beads or uncooked rice to fill the case and bake for 20-25 minutes - the baking time will vary considerably from oven to oven.

    

13. When cooked properly, the pastry should have a golden colour all over, particularly in the centre, which tends to be the last part to colour and become crisp.

    

14. The tart shells are now ready to be filled.