This is a photo of what I am going for!

That picture looks yummy!! I will defer to others more experienced as my pie baking experience is fairly new and the recipe I use would likely not work in a food processor which I don't have. But I look forward to the recipes that will be posted.

I've seen Martha Stewart make many in the food processor. I went to her web site and found several that may work for you. That recipe you show looks great!

Basic pie crust,

Pate Brisee Pie dough

The crust you show in your picture looks more like a cookie dough crust than a pie crust. Check out Paula Deans Fresh Fruit Tart on Food Network. That's more like the crust you're looking for. The only time I made a tart, it was with a ginger snap crust, but I wouldn't hesitate to use the Paula Dean crust. It got good reviews.

No matter which recipe you choose, the key for me learning how to do this was watching a few YouTubes. For those of us who are not bakers, watching someone else bring the dough together helps speed up how long it takes for us to get a "feel" for the process.

Dee thanks, I don’t want to buy a food processor for here just yet.

Georgy, I will look into that one.

Zalco, good point about watching.

You don't want to use a pie crust for a tart, you want to use a tart crust. Pie crusts are for light and flakey, tart crusts more solid and crumbly to support the filling. Pie is pastry dough, tart is pastry crust.

The recipe given from the woks of life site in the pic is an easy and classic tart crust. Just use a pastry cutter or a pair of butterknives to cut in the crust if you don't have a processor.

A graham cracker or ginger snap crust is super easy and the biggest part of the work is crushing the cookies, which you can do in a ziploc and rolling pin (or baseball bat, heavy pot, etc.) I have recently begun making regular pie crust using all butter because I have no Crisco, and I don't have easy access to a grocery. The tricky thing about it is that the ingredients have to be COLD, including the water which should be ice water. You have to chill the butter up until you add it, chill the dough after mixing, chill the crust once it's in the pie pan -- it's a pain in the butt to make. If I were you, I'd go for the graham cracker crust, which is nice with a fruit tart.

I was going to suggest pate sucree, but I think all the tart dough recipes are the same or very similar. You can also use a short crust made with grated frozen butter, but laminate it a couple of times, as you would puff pastry. I did that for chicken pot pie last week and it was a big hit (but the crust isn't sweet).

I watched a cooking show on public broadcasting about a week ago and the guest was making a chocolate baked tart with French Butter Pastry tart crust. Not a method I'd seen or used, but I want to try it. Could not look more simple, and no rolling...

French Butter tart crust - Lebovitz

I keep my butter in the freezer and grate it on the biggest holes of a box grater when making pie crusts, biscuits etc.

I agree with the others about not using a pie shell for a fruit tart or flan.

My guess is it is about cutting in the butter into the flour. I use my Kitchen aid with the wisk on for this and it is easy peasy. I do not have a food processor.

Personally, I would use the recipe given on The Woks of Life site. A pastry blender or two butter knives would work just fine. And if you don't have a pastry blender, they are inexpensive and very handy to have. (I use mine for chopping hard boiled eggs, among other things.) Be sure your butter is VERY cold! Any of Lars' recipes that i have tried have been very good, so I imagine his tart recipe is, too, although it sounds a bit more complicated than other tart crust recipes. A shortbread cookie dough would probably be good, too.

Morz8, I'm not sure I'd ever be brave enough to try that one, please let us know the results if you try it.

Rusty

Rusty, it looked super simple and just pressed in place with fingers. The PBS guest cook did the heating in a saucepan and not the oven but same results, same measurements.

eld, I read your post wrong.....I read it as all you had was a FP! Happy Monday! Lol!

The French butter tart recipe looks good - I will have to try that. My crust recipe is pâte à foncer (because it has egg), which is not all that different, except in the cooking methods. I think browning the butter is a good idea, and I like that the French recipe uses 1/8 tsp salt, compared to a whole teaspoon in Martha Stewart's recipe, which would taste way too salty for me. Desserts do not need to be salty, but Martha is a salt addict, which is why I do not follow any of her recipes exactly.

Rusty, I did not know you had made any of my recipes, but I'm glad you liked them!

BTW, I used to bake desserts for a restaurant in San Francisco around 1977.

My crust recipe is a pâte à foncer because it has egg, but it is very similar to
pâte brisee. F

I would like to try the French recipe that Morz posted, as I think it would taste good with the browned butter and might be somewhat easier. I also like that is only has 1/8 tsp salt, compared to a full teaspoon of salt in the Martha Stewart recipe, but then Martha is a major salt addict.

I thought I deleted my second post here, but I guess that was not an option.

I like using a buttery shortbread dough for most of my tarts. If you have a hand mixer (with "regular" beaters), it will work nicely for this recipe. As with shortbread cookies, I use softened butter for a shortbread crust. The dough here gets chilled after pressing it into the tart pan. Just made this recently for a simple lemon curd tart.

Tart Crust (for 10-inch tart pan)

12 T. softened butter (I prefer salted butter for this.)

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups flour

Pinch salt

Mix the butter and sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until they are just combined. Add the vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and salt, then add them to the butter-and-sugar mixture. Mix on low speed until the dough starts to come together. Dump onto a surface dusted with flour and shape into a flat disk. Press the dough into a 10-inch-round tart pan, making sure that the finished edge is flat. Chill until firm.

Preheat oven to 350.

Butter 1 side of a square of aluminum foil to fit inside the chilled tart and place it, buttered side down, on the pastry. Fill with beans or rice. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and beans, prick the tart all over with the tines of a fork, and bake again for 20 to 25 minutes more, or until lightly browned. Allow to cool to room temperature.

Morz8, I agree, it looks super simple, and doing it in a pot on the stove top makes more sense to me than using the oven. I meant I'm not brave enough to risk ruining (and thus losing) perfectly good butter and other ingredients. It just doesn't look very good to me, appears 'greasy', for one thing, and too thin to hold well. So I expect it to be tough. But I know, you can't always tell by pictures alone.

Rusty

morz8, now you got me thinking back to school days. Hot method and cold method for tart crust making. There's some memory blurs with tarts and pate a choux, custards and cremes. Tarts, eclairs, cream puffs, ice creams- it was an intense couple weeks of techniques, lol.

Lars, your Danish Butter Cookie is what stands out in my mind, so good! I also remember making a rye bread that I'm pretty sure was your recipe. I liked it a lot, but only made it once because husband didn't like it. But don't take that to heart, he was a pretty finicky eater. He could eat steak (well done!), potatoes, tomatoes and plain white bread every day and be satisfied. Cooking fir him was a chore, but over the years he did finally learn to eat a little more variety, as long as I didn't get too carried away. He did like any cookie, pie or cake I baked though. That helped!

Rusty