Clotilde Dusoulier's Strawberry Tartlets with Breton Butter Crust

All week long, Clotilde Dusoulier of Chocolate & Zucchini will be sharing recipes from her latest, The French Market Cookbook, answering our questions, and giving away copies of her book to a few lucky readers. With her as our guest editor, we're feeling slightly more French -- and significantly more inspired.

Brittany is a land of butter, and with this butter they make shortbread cookies that are gloriously golden and shatter-in-your-mouth crumbly. These sablés bretons are traditionally served on their own, but in recent years French pastry chefs have taken to using them as the foundation for fruit tartlets, especially strawberry. In my version, the pastry cream is subtly flavored with lemon, which bolsters the sweetness of the berries.

Strawberry Tartlets with Breton Shortbread Crust

Makes eight 3-inch tartlets, or one 10-to 12-inch tart

For the Tartlets:

1 large organic egg
3 tablespoons unrefined blond cane sugar (also sold as evaporated cane juice)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2/3 cup milk (not skim) or unflavored, unsweetened nondairy milk
Grated zest of 1 organic lemon 
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
Breton Shortbread Tart Dough (recipe follows), baked
1 1/4 pound strawberries, preferably small, hulled and halved or quartered depending on their size
2 tablespoons strawberry jam (optional)

For the Breton Shortbread Tart Dough:

1/3 cup unrefined blond cane sugar (also sold as evaporated cane juice)
6 tablespoons high-quality unsalted butter, softened
1 small fresh vanilla bean or 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 large organic egg
1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photos by Francoise Nicol