Fig Mascarpone Tart - an exquisite way to say goodbye to summer

Fig Mascarpone Tart – our tribute to the passing summer 🙂

Summer is officially over! And what better way to properly say goodbye to the amazing summer and welcome the colourful fall than by making a gorgeous dessert! So, for this we chose to combine the sweetness of fresh Figs and the creaminess of Mascarpone cheese into a delicious and elegant tart: Fig Mascarpone Tart

The ingredients below are for 4 small tart and 1 – 20cm tart (however you may use a 24 cm tart tin instead).

Ingredients for the Sweet Tart Shell:

• 250 g pastry flour
• 125 g cold butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 egg
• 85 g icing sugar

Ingredients for the Mascarpone cream:

• 500 g Mascaropone cheese
• 80 g granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• zest of 1 lemon
• vanilla extract
• lemon extract
• 30 ml flavoured liqueur
• 6 fresh figs, sliced

How to make Fig Mascarpone Tart:

First begin by making the sweet pastry shell:

• Preheat oven to  160°C and spray the tart tin with cooking spray. Set aside.
• Into a medium size bowl, sift together flour and icing sugar. Add pieces of butter
• Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles the wet sand.
• Add the egg and mix a bit until combined. Do not over mix.
• Press the mixture to hold it together and create a ball of dough. Wrap it in cling film and place it in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
• When ready, take the dough out of the refrigerator and roll it onto a well floured surface.
• Place it over your tart tin and cut the excess pastry. Be carefully when placing the dough in the tin, as this pastry breaks really easy. But you can use the remaining dough to patch up those areas.
• Place the tin in the refrigerator for aprox. 15 minutes, to allow the pastry dough to harden.
• Once cooled, take the tin out from the refrigerator and place it on a baking sheet.
• For pre-baking (or blind baking), cut and place some baking paper on the dough and than place baking ceramic beans. If you don’t have ceramic beans, then you replace them with dried chickpeas, beans, or even rice. I usually use chickpeas for this step.
•  Pre-bake the shell for 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool a bit. When ready to be handled, remove the beans and the baking paper.
• Brush with a beaten egg and return to oven for additional 10-15 minutes (depending on how well is done).
• Again, remove it from oven and let it cool before making the filling.

Mascarpone filling:

• Preheat oven to 110°C.
• In a large bowl, whisk the egg, egg yolk, vanilla, lemon zest and extract and liqueur until everything well combined and the eggs have been broken.
• Add the mascarpone cheese and mix again until the mixture is soft and creamy.
• Fill the cooled pastry shell and bake for 1 hour or until the cream sets.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool off before  topping  it with the fresh figs.
• Enjoy!

See our delicious Rhubarb Tart recipe.
The Fig Mascarpone Tart recipe was inspired by the Italianicious magazine