A Cake and some Fruity Tarts

I haven't been baking sweet treats much lately, because I have been experimenting with sour dough,  I have got the starter sussed but I have had mixed results with the proving time; but that's another story for another blog post.  For now I want to show you the cake and small tartlets I made.

The cake is a basic chocolate sandwich cake, filled with raspberries and vanilla buttercream, (rather a lot of buttercream in fact, one might say too much).  

What do you think, too much?  

What's that, you need a closer look?  OK ...

I purposely used fresh fruit rather than jam, believing the raspberries would cut through the rich chocolate sponge and the buttercream, they did!

On to the tarts, I have had a bash at making something like these before, which you can see here.  I was   inspired by those fancy,  beautifully composed treats you see in a patisserie and little pile of tins I bought whilst on honeymoon in a St Ives charity shop.

I used a different pastry recipe this time, the same as I used for my Lemon Meringue pie by Dan Lepard (he writes for the Guardian).   It just sweet enough and very workable after chilling.

Instead of filing them with creme patissiere, I made some chantilly cream, which is double cream, flavoured with vanilla and icing sugar.

I used fresh raspberries and kiwi fruit to decorate.

That's all!