Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

I've been having problems setting pastry cream of late. I swear I cook it until it is thick and boiling, then leave it on the heat for a couple of minutes more. Yet time and time again my cream is not setting up very well. It turns into this gooey mass... a tasty gooey mass, yet not a very elegant mass when it is cut into slices. I don't want to use corn products in my baking unless it is fresh corn (although I do make some exceptions especially when I use chocolate or am making a candy) so I've been using potato starch instead of corn starch in the pastry cream. I'm wondering if this may be my downfall?

Anyway, back to the tart. A strawberry and rhubarb puree was made and then placed on a tart base (this wasn't a pate sucree...as I ran out of pastry flour. So I made an old tart base that I hadn't made in ages). I then put on the pastry cream and on top of that some strawberries. A very simple tart but devastatingly good.

Basque Cake

A cake with some interesting textures and flavors. I first made this cake at school. It's a cake with a crunchy textured top and bottom, and then a soft middle. The filling is simply pastry cream. The cake we made at school consisted of a cake that was basically dripping with rum, a vanilla pastry cream, and dried cherries and slivered almonds on top of the pastry cream. 

When I made this cake at home I used pear liquor instead of rum, I made the pastry cream a star anise pastry cream, and then I caramelized apples in sugar, star anise and butter. Instead of almonds, I used roasted walnuts. It was strangely savory, bar the sweetness of the cake proper the anise certainly added some savory element that I wasn't expecting. 

The braeburn apples, the cake flour and  eggs (which had gorgeous deep orange yolks, which contributed to the crazy yellow color of the pastry cream) were from a local farmers market. It's so exciting going to farmers markets, I seriously love them. Everything is so amazingly fresh, and you get to know the people working there, really recommend you try some if you haven't already!

Basque Cake; not the prettiest cake, but an interesting one to make, and an easy one to play around with.