Raspberry and White Chocolate tart

I make this tart often, mostly because it is extremely easy to make requiring only 5 ingredients, providing you use ready made frozen pastry or a flan case. I love the look of the long rectangular tart tins but they're rather difficult to fit the pastry in often requiring a patch job or three but since this is a recent purchase I feel obliged to make at least a few goes using it. Hopefully you'll find my dodgy pastry joins more spun with home-made charm than blundering and clumsy. I've also made this with the German Obstboden cases and it looks quite good in them although I always worry that the white chocolate filling might seep through the sponge so its never a calming experience.

To make it truly spectacular looking you will need fresh raspberries as frozen raspberries tend to bleed all over the place and since we have a gorgeous cream coloured filling, you want the red and white contrast to make it look utterly gorgeous. Also, a rather timely note, the red raspberries with the white snowy icing sugar look fabulously Christmassy.

I find fresh raspberries to be one of the most "diva-ish" fruits to work with. They're very expensive, extremely delicate, temperamental and need to be used straight away. Indeed this batch were only purchased today and when I got them home, some had started to "bleed" so a late night baking session was in order before any more of these beauties bled to death!

Raspberry and White Chocolate tart

• 1 sheet sweet shortcrust pastry

• 2x 225g punnets of fresh raspberries

Filling:

• 150g white chocolate chopped

• 1 cup cream

• 2 egg yolks

Preheat oven to 200c. Place pastry in flan tin with removable base and trim to fit. Prick holes in bottom and top with paper and fill baking weights (or rice) and bake blind for 5 minutes. Remove the paper and weights and bake for a further 6 minutes or until pastry is a light golden colour.

To make the filling place chocolate and cream in bowl over saucepan of simmering water until melted and combined. Whisk in egg yolks. Pour mixture into tart shell (still in tin) and bake at 140C for 25 minutes or until is just set. Refrigerate until cold and when ready to serve top with fresh raspberries, dust with icing sugar (or leave plain) and slice into thin slices.

Variation 1: Crush black sesame nougatine and sprinkle on top.

Variation 2: Omit raspberries and drizzle dark chocolate artistically on top

Variation 3: Use good quality dark chocolate instead of white chocolate