Yoghurt puff pastry tartlets with mascarpone and cherries

Carolina, author of the gastronomic blog La Cocina de Carolina , proposes a recipe that will captivate many: some of you will be impatient to prepare it right away, and many others will be eager to try it! Whether you are one of the first or the second, enjoy it!

One of the things I like most about making desserts is making the dough myself. Even though they sell them ready-made in any food establishment, it really makes a difference to prepare your own tart base. Not only because of the quality of the ingredients we use (the flavour of a dough made with good quality butter is unbeatable), but also because of giving it our personal touch. In this case I have chosen to add a couple of tablespoons of Greek yoghurt to the base of these mascarpone tartlets, which makes them perfect for savoury tartlets or cheese tartlets, as in this case.

To make the base we can choose between two methods: either mixing the flour and butter with our hands very quickly (and dangerously if it's hot because the butter would get too hot and that's precisely what we don't want to happen), or using our food processor with the paddle attachment at slow speed, this is the method I used for today's tartlets.

Ingredients

For the cream cheese:

380 g mascarpone cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
80 g sifted icing sugar
400 g Greek yogurt
300 g cherries (can be fresh or frozen)
1 extra tablespoon of powdered sugar

For the yogurt dough:

225 g flour
125 g of diced butter (cold)
80 g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons of Greek yogurt
A very small pinch of salt

Preparation

Dough preparation:

We start by preparing the yoghurt dough by putting the flour, butter and icing sugar in our food processor with the flat paddle attachment at speed 2 out of 10, until it forms a breadcrumb-like texture (we must be careful not to over-beat the mixture as the butter will heat up and form a paste. If this happens, we can place the mixture in the freezer for about 15 minutes and repeat the process). Once we have the breadcrumb-like texture, we add the egg, salt and yoghurt and continue mixing until we see that the ingredients have been integrated.

We place the dough on a flat surface and flatten it with our hands to form a square, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.

We divide the dough into eight pieces and stretch each one between two sheets of non-stick baking paper, to 4 mm thick: for this we will use an adjustable rolling pin with the ring of the indicated thickness.

Joseph Joseph Adjustable Rolling Pin , and Birkmann Traditional Springform Tartlet Molds

Grease the tartlet moulds with a little butter and carefully place each rolled out pastry on top. Trim the excess edges and prick the base of the pastry several times with a fork (this way we will avoid air getting trapped inside and the pastry puffing up in the oven). Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 160ºC. Cover the tartlets with baking paper and place some dried legumes (you can use rice, chickpeas or lentils) on top to weigh them down, or, very conveniently, some specially designed ceramic baking balls . Bake for about 20 minutes. Remove the weight and paper and continue baking for another 10 minutes or until the pastry is lightly browned.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before unmolding.

Preparation of mascarpone cream:

Place the mascarpone, vanilla extract and icing sugar in a large bowl and beat with your whisk until the mixture thickens. Add the yoghurt and mix again. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Mix the cherries with the icing sugar and let them rest for 10 minutes so that they marinate well and release their juice. Divide the yoghurt mixture between the unmoulded tartlets and arrange the marinated cherries on top along with the caramel that they have released when mixed with the sugar.

Kitchen aid hand mixer