Rhubarb Brûlée Tartlettes with Ginger

Before rhubarb fatigue sets in, I found a recipe I’d never made before in one of my favourite books, In The Sweet Kitchen. This tart has a baked custard base encasing poached rhubarb and candied ginger, and a crunchy sugar layer on top.

The recipe has a small-ish list of ingredients, but there are multiple components to make. I didn’t need to make the pâte brisée, as I found a frozen dough disc in my freezer downstairs, very likely an extra from the banana tart project last fall. The rhubarb filling is just the chopped stalks cooked soft with a bit of brown sugar, and the custard is just crème anglaise.

For assembly, you brush a little jam on the bottom of the shells (I used apple jelly), spoon some rhubarb filling and minced crystallized ginger in, and pour over the custard. In a medium-low oven, you bake it until the custard is barely set.

At serving time, you brûlée some brown sugar on each tartlet. This is the kind of fancy dessert to serve others, as it looks impressive, but is not overly complicated to make. I suppose it depends on what you think is complicated…

A few critical notes: there’s a lot of leftover crème anglaise if you use a full two tablespoons of rhubarb filling per tart. I used the excess to make French toast a few days later. While I enjoyed eating this tart for difference’s sake, I think I prefer pear and custard better, and would use rhubarb in different applications.