Gooseberry Tart

Submitted by MarieRynr

"The first gooseberries of the season, especially when baked in a tart of pie, are traditionally served on Whit Sunday, making a pudding that has always been particularly popular in the county of Warwickshire. The elderflower heads give a delicate Muscat flavour to the fruit."

 

• Ready In: 1hr
• Ingredients: 7
• Serves: 4

ingredients

• 1 - 1 1⁄2 lb gooseberry, topped, tailed, then rinsed and drained
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 -2 elderflower head, rinsed and the stems removed
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1⁄4 pint double cream
• 4 tablespoons clear honey
• 8 ounces prepared shortcrust pastry

directions

1. Place the gooseberries, sugar and elderflower heads in a saucepan with a little water and simmer until the gooseberries are very soft. Remove the elderflower heads, sieve the gooseberries or puree in a processor or blender, allow to cool and then stir in the eggs.
2. Fold the cream and honey together and stir into the gooseberry mixture.
3. Set the oven to 400ºF, or Mark 6.
4. roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and use to line a lightly greased 8 inch flan dish or pie plate, trimming the edges neatly.
5. Pour the gooseberry mixture into the case and bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the filling is golden.
6. Place on a wire rack and allow to cool before serving, either on it's own or with pouring cream as an accompaniement.

Reviews

[Mrs B]

Very yummy and very gooseberryfied; I used the full 1 ½ lbs of gooseberries. We found this just a little bit tart (even for us), but this may have been due to the amount of gooseberries (I'll use a bit more sugar next time), however we loved the way the flavour of honey shone through the gooseberries. I didn’t have any elderflowers so used 1/2 tbsp elderflower cordial instead. Although this tasted fine before baking, some of the flavour seemed to get lost in the baking. Again I’ll use more next time (maybe 1 tbsp?). If you use cordial I doubt if there’s a need to add any water when simmering the gooseberries at the step 1. Other suggestions are a) puree the cooked gooseberries in a processor; the seeds look really pretty in the pie, you'd loose this with sieving; b) I found my pie didn’t set too well on cooling (again maybe due to the quantity of gooseberries), but was fine on day 2 after it had been thoroughly chilled; so I recommend chilling; c) this makes 4 very generous portions so I think it could easily serve 6 :-)