Triple fig tart recipe

Directions

1. Mix together the flour, butter and powder sugar in one bowl. You can use castered sugar in case you do not have powder sugar, but you should avoid regular sugar, because its granules are too big to dissolve quickly. Once the three ingredients are in the bowl, ​​start mixing them with your hands, crumbling butter into fluffy flakes.
2. Now add one middle size yolk and paste everything together with your hands until the dough gets soft and smooth. Do not worry, if in the beginning you will think, that your ingredients are not sticking to each other: butter and egg yolk will do their job in the end. Just be patient and a bit persistent; use your fist to beat up your dough. When ready, roll the dough into a ball. The dough can be used straight away, kept in the fridge for 2-3 days or in a freezer for a few weeks.
3. Once you've cracked the dough, pre-heat the oven: 160C/320F/fan.
4. The amount of ingredients, mentioned in my dough recipe, is enough for one 20cm/8" form. Take a piece of a baking paper, which will cover the whole form up to the edges and roll out the dough to match your paper shape.
5. Now carefully place the baking paper and the dough into the form and cut off all extras. If your dough breaks in some places, just fix it with the left-overs. Now make holes with a fork or cover the base with the baking stones and bake for 10 minutes.
6. While the pastry is cooking, let's get ready with the cheese cake and the fig nougat. In a separate bowl mix together 3 fresh figs with skin, ricotta, vanilla sugar and cream cheese.
7. Fig nougat was kindly given to me by Sun Flavours. It has a very interesting spicy and nutty flavour... I would simply say: it tastes like Christmas, but in a very mild way! Inspired by the typical goodies from the Algarve (southern part of my beloved Portugal) - such as: figs, almonds, anise, and cinnamon... it nicely blends with my summer fig tart and will work as the only sugar injecting ingredient! You can easily find it in some Portuguese stores in Paris or substitute by traditional French fig jam...
8. Nougat serves as a layer between the dough and the cream. It was a bit thick, so I sliced it in two and then cut each of those parts in two halves. Nicely spread the nougat over the hot dough.
9. Now add the creamy mixture and shave the raw dough left-overs on top. Put the cake back into the oven and bake for another 20-25 minutes until your dough becomes golden brown and the cream becomes solid and starts separating from the dough.
10. Sweet pastry dough is very fragile when hot, so let the cake cool a bit in the form. Then move it to the plate, cut off the baking paper and decorate with the remaining fresh figs.
11. This tart is so delicious and healthy! Tarts are great any time of the year, but especially in summer, because you have so many fresh fruit, that you can experiment with. Instead of figs, you could use plums, apricots, pears, raspberries, strawberries, etc... Once you start appreciating the natural sweetness of the most amazing and humble goodies from your own summer garden, life changes forever!