Coconut Tarts with Strawberry Jam
Pretty little coconut tarts made from a light pastry, with a sweet strawberry jam base, a layer of coconut cake and topped off with a cherry.
Servings: 20 tarts
Calories:
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Alter quantities (metric only) 20 tarts
Here's what you'll need...
Ingredients you'll need...
Pastry
- 225 g plain flour (US = 1.6 cups or 1 cup and 10.5 tbsp)
- ¼ teaspoon large pinch of salt
- 80 g icing sugar (US = 0.7 cups or 10½ tbsp)
- 115 g unsalted butter grated (US = ½ cup or 1 stick)
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 tablespoon milk
Coconut filling
- 30 g unsalted butter (plus a little extra for greasing) softened (US = 2 tbsp)
- 65 g caster sugar (US = ⅓ cup)
- 2 large eggs at room temperature and beaten
- 60 ml milk (US = 4 tbsp)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 60 g plain flour (US = ¼ cup or 6½ tbsp)
- pinch of salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon cornflour
- 100 g desiccated coconut (US = 1 cup)
- 135 g seedless strawberry jam (US = ¼ cup or 6½ tbsp)
- 10 glace cherries cut into halves
Here's what we do...
Coconut tart pastry
- Add your flour, salt and icing sugar to your food processor and give it a whizz to combine evenly. Or you can mix it together in a large bowl.
- Dot over your grated butter and pulse for about 15 pulses until the mixture becomes sand like. Or rub in by hand.
- Add your egg yolk, vanilla extract and milk and pulse for about 10 pulses (lasting a second each) by which time the mixture should be starting to form some clumpy boulders of various sizes.
- Lightly flour your worksurface and tip your pastry mixture out.
- Bring the pastry gently together into a ball, knead literally just a 2-3 times to achieve this.
- Flatten the dough to a depth of about 1 inch, wrap in cling film (saran wrap) and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
- Whilst your dough is in your fridge make your coconut topping.
Coconut tart filling
- Heat your oven to 180°C/160°C Fan/355°F/Gas mark 4.
- Place a large baking tray into your oven to heat.
- Using your pastry brush, grease your tart cases with butter, making sure you get into all of the crevices.
- Beat together your softened butter and caster sugar until it becomes a soft, spreadable paste and is a little lighter in colour. I tend to do this by hand using the spatula as there is so little to mix.
- Add your beaten eggs, milk and vanilla extract and beat until smooth and you can see a few air bubbles on the top.
- Sift in your flour, salt, baking powder and cornflour.
- Beat again until fully combined.
- Fold in your desiccated coconut until evenly mixed together.
Putting it all together
- Divide your pastry dough up into 20 balls of 24 grams.
- Pop a dough ball into each tart case and press it down with your thumb. Then starting from the base begin to press the dough up the sides of the tart case. Moving around in circles so that the dough is kept at the same level and thickness. Try to press the dough very slightly above the edge of the tart case and then wipe it away, so that you have an even and smooth finish.
- Pop the tarts back into your refrigerator to set for 10 minutes, as the pastry will have become warm during the moulding process.
- Take ¾teaspoon of jam and add it to each tart.
- Take a heaped teaspoon of coconut filling and place on top of the jam base.
- Add half of a cherry to each tart, but do not press it into the topping otherwise it will sink.
- Place the tarts onto you pre-heated baking tray.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the top of the coconut tarts and the pastry case edges are nicely browned.
Supporting Notes
These Coconut tarts easily keep for 3-5 days in an airtight container.
You can freeze them but they should be consumed within a month.