The holiday birthday cake challenge; Peach tart with lime and rosemary

Level: Easy
Total Time: 2H50

Every year we have our friends over at the place we rent by the sea in summer. During their stay we celebrate my friend’s birthday with a cake and champagne. But that can be quite a struggle as I never find what I need to make a nice cake in this holiday house. I still remember my attempt to make whipped cream with a fork while the temperature was 35°c… So this year I gave myself a challenge; Find a recipe that is original and tasty, easy to make when it is very hot and you have no baking tools and preferably uses local ingredients.

I found this recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi that I inspired from and it is incredible! I made a few changes, but the ingredients are there. And it respects my challenge criterias. I can get the most amazing peaches and rosemary from the local farmers market and the other ingredients from the local supermarket. If I was at home I would have made the puff pastry, but here I buy it ready to roll out from the supermarket. This peach tart with lime and rosemary is my new summer favorite!

THE TIPS TO SUCCEED

1: Choose the peaches quite firm (without them being hard as stone…). They will infuse and cook so no need to have very ripe peaches.

2: Make sure to respect the first 7-8 minutes of cooking the tart with no topping. That avoids your tart softening too much from the juice from the peach.

3: This tart is rather tangy due to the lime. If you like it sweeter, add drizzle a tbsp of sugar over the peaches before cooking.

Let’s get started

Ingredients

• 5 pcs Peaches (yellow or white)
• 1 pcs Lime
• 2 sprigs Rosemary
• 40 g Sugar
• 1 pcs Puff pastry dough
• 10 g Butter
• 150 g Créme Fraiche
• 1 pcs Egg yolk
• ¼ tsp Cornflour

How to do it

Start by cutting the peaches in 0,5cm thick slices. In a bowl add 35g of the sugar, the juice from the lime, the skin of ½ half the lime in stripes, the rosemary sprigs and the peach. Mix gently and cover with plastic and put in the fridge to infuse for 2 hours. Turn it gently a couple of times during infusion.

Mix, using a spoon, the Créme Fraiche with 1tsp of sugar and the zest from ½ lime. Cover and keep in the fridge.

Put the oven to heat at 180°c (hot air). Then place your puff pastry on a baking tray covered with baking paper and fold in the edges on 1 cm and stick the dough with a fork several times to avoid it to inflate during cooking. Cover the dough with a baking paper and put something a bit heavy on top to avoid it to inflate (you can for example use metal cooking rings or just simply a layer of rice or pasta). Cook for 7-8 minutes.

Remove the peach, lime skin and rosemary from the bowl. Save the juice.

After the cooking for 7-8 minutes, remove the baking paper from the tart and place the peach on the dough. Add the butter in small pieces over the peach. Brush egg yolk on the edges and then put the tart back in the oven for a further 12 minutes.

While the tart cooks, bring the juice from the infusion to boil in a small saucepan. Mix the cornflower with a little bit of water and pour it gently into the juice while whisking. Then add one of the rosemary sprigs and keep simmering until you have reduced the juice by at least ⅓. Remove the rosemary brig.

Pour the thickened juice over the peach in the tart and put back in the oven to cook for another 20 minutes.

How to serve the peach tart with lime and rosemary

You can serve this Peach tart still warm with a spoon of the Créme Fraiche with sugar and lime zest. Delicious!