Sweet Corn & Black Sesame Caramel Tarts

Experimenting with new flavors in my favorite dessert vehicle: pastry cream in a tart shell. 464: Sweet Corn & Black Sesame Caramel Tarts

Lessons learned from these tarts:

Sweet corn is actually such a yummy dessert flavor. 8-year-old me who shoveled Chevy’s corn pudding into her face says, “um of course”
Caramel corn is not made with caramel sauce, oops! Too much liquid = soggy popcorn
Black sesame caramel is hard to stop eating. The slightly bitter nuttiness balances out the sweetness so well!

Early Halloween anyone? Black sesame caramel speckled popcorn piled on top of a sweet corn custard that candy corn wishes it tasted like.

I almost left them like this (I wasn’t sure if black caramel corn would be TOO Halloween considering it’s only halfway through September) but it felt too boring a presentation for the fun flavors hidden inside.

Also, what kind of baking optical illusion is happening with tart shell thickness? It seems so insanely thin when I roll it out to 3mm that I get spooked and don’t go to 2mm. Next time, courage!

I never want to go back to a pâte sucrée dough that doesn’t have almond flour. It’s like a crispy almond cookie that holds its shape perfectly and forgives me for re-rolling.

Happy sand.

Squish.

Papering the walls of the tart ring first and then using the lined ring to cut out the base like a cookie means no extra thick corners. Sometimes there’s a visible line where they join but … se(a)ms worth it.

Time for a quick freezer nap.

A lot of recipes I found for sweet corn pastry cream suggested using canned corn, but making this at the tail end of summer means fresh sweet corn! Yep that’s a bundt pan, and yep it catches all the bouncing kernels that try to make a run for it.