Sablé Breton Tart for the GBBO
Amaze your family and friends with this beautiful Sablé Breton from Patisserie Week. You might THINK it’s an impossible
The Sablé Breton consists of thick dense buttery cookie topped with raspberry jam, pistachio mousseline (fancy creme pat!), fresh berries, and wee little airy meringue kisses.
When I heard the hosts name this bake for Patisserie Week I swear I was hearing “Sawblade Breton Tart” But then I realized they were talking about Sablé Pastry!
Then I got excited!! Because Pâte Sablé was the last pastry dough I hadn’t made. And now it was time.
Types of Pastry Dough
As I mentioned in my post on Shortcrust Pastry There are several types of pastry dough:
- Pâte brisée=shortcrust with butter, flour, salt, and minimal water
- Pâte à foncer=shortcrust WITH egg
- Pâte sucrée=sweet shortcrust with egg and sugar
- Pâte Sablé=this is the same as sucrée except the sugar and butter are creamed together, this dough is used for crispy cookie bases
The hallmark of a good Sablé Pastry is that it’s crisp, crumbly, and definitely buttery. In fact, Sablé just means sandy, so you really ARE going for crumbly.
The French ALSO have Sablé Breton COOKIES which are thin, crispy, buttery, cookies, kind of like a shortbread cookie. But not quite.
Patisserie Week 2021
So it was Patisserie Week on the GBBO and the Semi-Finals. The bakes were ALL hard, some of the hardest I’ve seen this season. I mean, they were fussy bakes, lots of work, lots of details, I guess that means Patisserie, right?
The bakes for Patisserie Week were:
- The Signature Bake: Layered Slices
- The Technical: Sablé Breton
- The Showstopper: Entremets
Sadly this is ALMOST another one of those recipes, that just doesn’t work as written. It’s not that it’s BAD perse it’s just clunky. This one part, in particular, is misleading when talking about making Creme Mousseline “Pour the mixture into a clean bowl and cover the surface with cling film to prevent a skin forming. Leave to cool, then transfer to the fridge and chill for 1 hour, until set.”
If you leave Creme Mousseline to chill in the fridge and THEN try to whip warm butter into it you’re never going to get it smooth. The butter will immediately reharden and make your creme lumpy. It MUST be cooled only to room temperate, and be the same temperature as your softened butter.
Because it has flour AND eggs in it this doesn’t need to be chilled to make it set up, it’s practically set up once you cook it. So keep it on the counter to cool to room temp OR pop it in the fridge for 5-10 minutes to get it started and then cool until room temp.
If your creme mousseline gets lumpy when you try to whip in the butter because it’s not the same temperature as your butter you can set the bowl over a pan of gently warming water. And stir stir stir. You’re just trying to warm up the creme a bit you don’t want to melt the butter OR break down your creme.
How I changed this Sablé Breton Tart
You know I changed this up to make it easier to make. Why bother making homemade jam when I can use my own already made jam and so on.
- Added a dash of gel food color to the pistchios, if you do this don’t add too much, I did!
- Used homemade raspberry jam, you can use storebought as well
- Baked it in an 8 inch round pan, a little bigger than the called for 20cm pan
- Made chocolate shards rather than curls, if you have acetate you can make the curls
- Used edible gold glitter instead of gold leaf
TOols you need to make the Sablé breton tart
- Hand Mixer
- Stand Mixer
- Offset Spatula
- baking sheets
- 8 inch round cake pan
- piping bags
- star or flower tip of some sort
Sable Breton Fruit Tart
Equipment
Ingredients
Meringues
- 1 egg white
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
Sablé Base
- 8 1/2 TBSP butter softened
- 4 egg yolks room temperature
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tps fleur de sel I used kosher salt
Creme Mousseline
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 TBSP vanilla extract
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 7 TBSP soft butter
- 4 1/2 TBSP flour
Pistachio Paste
- 2/3 cup shelled pistachios
- 2 tsp light flavored oil I use light olive
- *optional* add a dab of gel food color if you need to make your pistachios MORE GREEN don’t over do it like I did!
Raspberry Jam layer and glaze
- 1 cup raspberry jam
- 3 TBSP water
Chocolate Shards
- 3 TBSP chopped chocolate
Toppings
- 10-12 large strawberries
- 1/2 pint of fresh raspberries
- edible glitter
Instructions
- Make the Meringues, preheat the oven to 225˚
- in a small clean bowl slowing start mixing the egg white and the pinch of salt, as the mixture gets thicker begin put the mixer on medium as it gets thick you can move it up to high
- once it's thick slowly add a little sugar at a time, and beat well between each addition, you want ALL the sugar dissolved in the meringue, if it stays gritty it will not whip up to glossy stiff peaks
- once all the sugar is in and dissolved put the meringue in a piping bag fitted with a star tip, ANY star or flow tip will do
- lay a sheet of parchment on a baking sheet, pipe small meringue kisses all over the sheet, they won't spread so you can make them close together
- once you've piped them out, bake them for 45 minutes in the warmed oven
- meanwhile make your sablé base, beat the butter on medium with the paddle in a stand mixer for 2-3 minutes or until it's light and fluffy
- meanwhile stir the egg yolks and sugar together until it's thickened up, set aside
- stir the flour, salt, and baking powder together
- use a wooden spoon to beat the butter into the egg yolk mix until thoroughly combined, stir in the flour mix until the dough comes together
- wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour
- Bake the sablé tart crust preheat the oven to 350˚, butter an 8 inch round cake tin, press the mixture in the bottom of the pan even, bake 20-25 minutes, just until it's set
- once baked cool on a baking rack for 5 minutes and then carefully remove from the pan
- make the Creme Mousseline, warm the milk and vanilla until it JUST about boils
- meanwhile, beat the egg yolks and sugar together
- sift the flour over the eggs and stir to combine
- when the milk is just about to boil pour it over the egg mix in the bowl and whisk until smooth
- return the mix to the saucepan, cook, and stir until it's smooth and thick, switch to a wooden spoon once it's hard to whisk
- once it's thick scrape it into a bowl and let it rest until it's the same temperature as the soft butter
- make the pistachio paste, grind the pistachios together with the oil to make a thick paste, you can add a dab of food color to make the pistachios more green, do not over tint them or they'll look like mine! set aside
- when the creme mousseline is room temp put it in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, slowly whisk in the butter until the butter is incorporated well
- fold in the pistachio paste and put in a pastry bag with a round tip or no tip and chill until ready to use
- make the raspberry glaze heat together the water and 2 TBSP of jam until soft and smooth set aside until assembly
- make the chocolate designs, gently heat the chocolate just until melted, then use a offset spatula to spread it on a piece of smooth foil or parchment paper, cool, and break into shards
- to assemble: lay the Sablé crust on a serving plate top with a layer of raspberry jam, then pipe on the pistachio creme mousseline to within 1/2 inch of the edge
- slice cleaned berries and pile in the center making a nice big mound
- dip the tops of some of the meringues in edible glitter OR use gold leaf
- add some to the top of the tart, add chocolate shards
- slice and serve!
Nutrition
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you didn’t say how much butter for the Creme
oops that’s 7 TBSP
You say to sprinkle the flour over the eggs for the CREME MOUSSELINE but you did not say how much flour.
Oops! It was in my notebook but didn’t translate over to the post! it’s in there now and it’s 4 1/2 TBSP!