Heart Cake with Vanilla and Raspberry

Put all the ingredients except the whole egg into a Bowl and rub them between your hands until no more clumps of butter are visible. Then add the egg and work it in.

Knead the dough briefly on the work surface until smooth — just long enough for it to hold together. The less you knead, the more crumbly it becomes. Wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

With a food processor and Dough hook it works just as well: put all the ingredients in together, run it briefly, done.

Preheat the oven to 180 °C fan. Grease the heart tin and dust it with flour — including in the points of the heart, otherwise the dough sticks there.

Knead the chilled dough briefly and roll it out 3 mm thin on a lightly floured surface. With rolling guides you get the same thickness everywhere — by eye, the dough always ends up thinner in the middle than at the edge.

Dust a little flour onto the dough, roll it loosely onto the Rolling pin and unroll it over the tin again. Press it firmly into the edges and points without stretching it: stretched dough shrinks back during baking.

Cut off the overhang with a straight knife and prick the base with a fork.

This is the step where watching helps more than reading — in the video from 4:14.

Place a sheet of baking paper on the dough base and fill it with blind-baking beads — they keep the base flat so it doesn't rise. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes at 180 °C fan.

Then take the tart out of the tin and let it cool completely on a Cake rack. Only once cold does the shortcrust pastry become crisp.

Put the Leaf gelatine into cold water to soak.

Bring the whole milk (part 1) to the boil once with the sugar. Meanwhile, stir the cold milk (part 2) with the cream powder and the vanilla seeds together in a separate Bowl — this prevents lumps.

As soon as the milk boils, turn down the heat a little, add a generous splash of it to the mixed cream powder mixture and stir well. This mixture then goes back into the pot, and everything is boiled down to a firm custard while stirring constantly. Don't forget to stir — otherwise it burns on the bottom.

Pour the finished custard into a large Bowl, cover it directly on the surface with cling film — that way no skin forms — and chill it for at least 30 minutes.

Once the cream has cooled completely, whip it briefly with the Hand mixer until it's smooth and supple.

Squeeze the gelatine out well and melt it in a small pan on a low setting. First stir a little vanilla cream into the liquid gelatine — this evens out the temperature — and then add this mixture to the rest of the cream. Without this intermediate step, the gelatine immediately forms strings.

Carefully fold the whipped full cream into the cream in three parts, ideally with the Whisk. You can work in the first portion more vigorously; with the second and third, go gently — the air in the cream is what makes the cream light.

Fill the finished cream into a Piping bag.

Melt some White couverture over a bain-marie and brush the cooled tart base completely with it — base, edge and corners.

This isn't a decorative step: the thin layer of chocolate keeps the moisture of the cream away from the dough. Without it, the shortcrust pastry goes soft after a few hours; with it, it stays crisp even the next day.

Let the couverture set before you carry on.

Fill the shell with the vanilla cream and smooth it out. Arrange the washed and well-dried raspberries on top — wet berries water down the cream — and finally dust everything with icing sugar or snow sugar.

Instead of raspberries, strawberries, blueberries or a mix work just as well. Almost any fresh fruit goes with a vanilla cream; the only important thing is that it's fresh and not out of a tin.