Classic Fruit Tart, part 3 (assembly)

Alrighty, let's finish this thing up. You're going to need: a pre baked tart shell, vanilla custard, some melted white or dark chocolate, an assortment of fruit (whatever you like) and some apricot jam.

Classic Fruit Tart, part 2 (custard)

No intro for this post because it's a "part 2". So lets just get into it. . .  

Just FYI, this vanilla custard recipe is from the Woodland Bakery Blog. You can find it here.

Classic Fruit Tart, part 1 (crust)

Over the 5 years that I worked in the bakery at our local grocery store I made about 1,000 fruit tarts. They were seriously a customer favorite. We didn't really make them from scratch and over the years the process and style of the tarts changed and evolved. No matter the version, they essentially consisted of a pastry crust, filled with vanilla custard and topped with fresh fruit and glaze. In making the tarts my job was one of assembly: putting together pre-made parts and topping with fruit. As you can imagine, by the time I left the bakery I was fruit-tarted out. If I never halved another strawberry or peeled another kiwi it was fine by me. I was D-O-N-E. Donezo, fo show!

Now, believe it or not, in all that time at the bakery, I had never actually had a fruit tart. Never tasted one in spite of the 1,000 tarts I had made. Not that I don't like fruit, or vanilla custard, or pastry. Totes like all those things, its just that other stuff in the dessert case appealed to me more. I'd always go for the slab of chocolate cake, the fudge topped eclaire or a luscious lemon pie. Seriously, why waste dessert calories on fruit? I'm not crazy. And then I finally had a slice. Pretty yummy. Fresh and fruity, vanilla-y and custardy and a cookie crust to boot. Why had I not tried one before? Why had I not made one before. They're easy to make (although lots of steps) and impressive. Silly me. 

Now, first things first. For a good fruit tart, you need to start with a good crust. . . 

(Note: I doubled the recipe so quantities in the pictures are twice what the recipe calls for. This dough will freeze pretty much indefinitely and it's nice to have on hand next time you want to make a tart.)