There's always one thing that I absolutely HAVE to get every time I go to Bourke Street Bakery, and that's a strawberry vanilla brûlée tart. I went to Bourke Street Bakery a few weeks ago late in the afternoon and I was so disappointed that they had sold out of them that I went back the next week just to satisfy my craving. And oh it was so good, the crispy, buttery pastry with the creamy custard filling and of course, that crunchy, slightly bitter toffee on the top.
Sadly Bourke Street Bakery is quite far from me and so I thought I'd try making these yummy tarts at home using the recipe from the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. It was surprisingly straightforward and to me the worst part was having to wait for the pastry to relax because I just wanted to bake them, blowtorch the hell out of the sugar on the top and devour them all!
Ok, so I admit I was still impatient and I didn't go through all the resting periods for the pastry which is why it shrank in the oven. But apart from having slightly shallower tart shells, the pastry was still as flaky and crisp as I remember it to be from the actual shop. I was also a bit ambitious with the amount of strawberry puree at first so when I put the custard into the tart shells it started to displace the strawberry puree that was in there - that's why there's not much strawberry in the photo unfortunately.
I've provided the original recipe below but since I only had 6 small tart tins that weren't quite the same size as specified, I just adjusted the measurements for my requirements. I found that even after doing that I still had some leftover strawberry puree but you can always use this as a topping for ice cream or another dessert. Or just do what Sir D did and drink the leftovers!
