Make An Awesome Cherry Tart With Minimal Effort

If you’d rather take a nap than deal with the stress of lining a tart tin, this charmingly sloppy galette is for you.

What is a galette? It’s derived from the French word galet, which means pebble. And it refers to a flat, round cake of sorts — like a savoury buckwheat crepe, or this free-form tart.

CHERRY GALETTE

Serves 8 pax

Ingredients:

Pastry

213g plain flour

7g caster sugar

¼ tsp fine sea salt

145g cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

80ml ice-cold water

Filling

950g cherries (about 850g after pitting)

¼ tsp fine sea salt

170g caster sugar (add more to taste if cherries are tangy)

1.5 tbsp cornstarch

2 tsp lemon juice (adjust to taste)

1 large egg + 1 tsp milk, beaten, for brushing

caster sugar, for sprinkling
 

Method:

Pastry:

1. Whisk flour, sugar and salt together in a large bowl. Add butter and rub into flour with fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal and only a few pea-sized lumps remain.

2. Drizzle water over flour mixture and stir gently with a spatula until the pastry just comes together. Do not over-mix.

3. Using hands, pat dough into a disc. Wrap tightly in plastic and refrigerate till chilled, at least 30 mins. The dough can also be refrigerated overnight or frozen for up to two weeks.

4. Place chilled dough on a sheet of lightly floured parchment paper. Cover dough with plastic wrap to prevent it from sticking to your rolling pin. Roll dough into a rough 14.5-inch circle.

5. Transfer rolled dough on its parchment paper to a baking tray, cover loosely in plastic wrap and chill while prepping filling.

Filling:

6. Preheat oven to 190°C. To pit cherries, remove the stem of each fruit, place atop a bottle opening and position a chopstick in cherry crevice. Push chopstick down firmly to remove pit.

7. Place pitted cherries in a large bowl and gently mix with salt, sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice.

8. Pile cherries onto the center of the dough, draining away any excess liquid from the fruit (you don’t want soggy pastry). Heap cherries slightly in the middle, leaving a 2-inch border around the dough’s circumference. Fold the dough border over the fruit, pressing and crimping lightly so it adheres to the cherries.

9. Brush pastry edges with the beaten egg and milk, then sprinkle with sugar. Slide galette into the centre rack of the oven and bake till its crust is golden-brown and the filling is bubbling, about 1 hr - 1hr 15 mins.

10. Remove galette from the oven and cool in its tray on a wire rack till slightly warm. Serve on its own, or with vanilla ice cream. This is best eaten on the day it’s baked.