Bake Off Recipe: Prue Leith’s Strawberry Tarts

Last night, Georgie Grasso was crowned the winner of The Great British Bake Off 2024, beating Christiaan de Vries and Dylan Bachelet at the final hurdle. For the last technical challenge of the year, the contestants were tasked with crafting an afternoon tea spread in three hours, complete with plaited egg and cress rolls, lemon sandwich cakes and strawberry tarts. If that all feels a bit much, why not just try one? We’ve shared the recipe for Prue Leith’s strawberry tarts below.

Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge No. 8: Strawberry Tarts

Prue’s afternoon tea is the perfect celebratory treat to share with loved ones. This recipe serves four but can be easily scaled up to suit your special occasion.

Ingredients:

For the pâte sucrée

• 125g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• Pinch of salt
• 75g unsalted butter
• 25g icing sugar
• 1 medium egg yolk mixed with 1 – 2 tsp water

For the crème pâtissière

• 25g caster sugar
• 2 medium egg yolks
• 15g cornflour
• 175ml whole milk
• ½ vanilla pod, seeds scraped

For the apricot glaze

• 100g fresh apricots, stoned
• 50g jam sugar
• To decorate:
• 12 strawberries, hulled

Equipment

• Fluted tart tins
• Baking beans

Method:

1. For the pâte sucrée, sieve the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, add the butter and rub into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the icing sugar. Beat the egg yolk and 1 tsp water together and add to the bowl. Bring together to form a dough, adding an extra 1 tsp water if needed. Gently knead the dough then roll out ½ cm thick. Cut out 4 x 11cm circle of pastry and use to line the fluted tart tins. Freeze for 30 minutes.
2. For the crème pâtissière. While the pastry is chilling, in a medium bowl, whisk the caster sugar with the egg yolks, cornflour and 25ml of the milk with a balloon whisk until pale and combined.
3. Gently heat the remaining 150ml milk with the vanilla seeds in a small pan until it just comes to the boil. Pour onto the egg mixture and whisk until well combined. Return the mixture to the pan and heat gently, whisking continuously, until the mixture thickens to custard consistency. Pour it into a bowl, cover with cling film touching the surface, then chill until set.
4. Heat the oven to 190°C/170°C fan/375°F/Gas 5. Line the pastry cases with baking paper and fill with baking beans, and blind bake for 12 minutes. Remove the baking beans and bake for a further 5 – 7 mins until dried out. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
5. For the apricot glaze, tip the apricots into a small food processor and blitz to a purée. Scrape the purée into a small pan, add the jam sugar and salt then place over a low heat and slowly bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat, pass through a fine sieve, then leave to cool.
6. Spoon the cooled crème pâtissière into a piping bag. Snip off the end of the bag and pipe a layer of the crème pâtissière into the pastry cases. Dice 4 of the strawberries and dot over the crème pâtissière, then pipe another layer of crème pâtissière over the strawberries to fill the tart cases.
7. Finely slice the remaining strawberries. Place the smaller slices of the strawberries in a cone shape in the centre of each tart, then arrange the larger slices, overlapping (pointed side upwards), around the cone of strawberries.
8. Glaze the strawberries with the apricot glaze.

Recipe from thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk