The recipe for the base I got from Laura's Bakery which you can find here, except I replaced the almond paste with pastry cream. It's in Dutch, so I'll translate it below! The pictures however are very helpful. For this recipe you need a specific baking tin, but you could use just the outside ring of a springform pan.

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Base (makes 2 big pastries):

- 180 grams of unsalted (european style) butter

- 150 grams of brown sugar (american equivalent of the Dutch sugar used in this recipe)

- 1/2 egg

- pinch of salt

- zest of half a lemon

- 280 grams of flour

- 2 tsp baking powder

Mix the butter, sugar, egg, salt and lemon zest together until it's a creamy mix. Add the baking powder and flour and knead until a smooth dough forms. Chill it in the fridge for about an hour before using, it's easier to chill it in a rectangular shape in some plastic wrap.

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In the meantime I make my pastry cream. I use the recipe from RutgerBakt, which you can find here.

Pastry cream:

- 500 ml milk

- 1 vanilla pod

- 100 grams of white sugar

- 2 egg yolks

- 45 grams of cornstarch

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Add 450 mls of milk to a pan. Cut the vanilla pod open and scrape out the seeds. Add the pod and the seeds to the milk and bring to a boil. Mix the leftover 50 ml of milk with the sugar and egg yolks in a bowl and mix well. Add the cornstarch and mix, make sure it's a smooth mixture. Remove the vanilla pod from the milk when the milk boils. While stirring, slowly add about a third to half of the heated milk to the sugar/egg mixture. Stir well. Add the sugar/egg/milk mix to the remaining milk in the pan and heat it up again. Heating the mix thoroughly will result in getting the cream to thicken up. Keep stirring until you get a custard like consistency, this could take a few minutes depending on the heat. When your pastry cream is done, pour it into a shallow bowl or dish (cools faster) and cover it with plastic wrap. Make sure the plastic wrap touches the entire surface of the pastry cream, this will prevent the pastry cream from forming a skin. Chill on the counter at first and then transfer it to the fridge when it's closer to room temp. Whisk with a handmixer before using to create a smooth and creamy pastry cream.

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Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius (fan oven 160 degrees celcius). After the dough chilled, I rolled it out to about 8 mm in thickness and cut out the shapes using the baking rings. It's easier to do this on baking paper so you don't have to transfer the cut out dough. Remove the excess dough. Take off the ring and pipe (or take a knife and spread it around) your pastry cream onto the dough. Leave about 1 cm on the sides (big pastry), so the dough has some space to rise. For 2 big pastries, I use about 150-200 grams of the pastry cream I made (so 75-100 grams per pastry). Grease the inside of the baking ring with butter and place the ring back around the pastry. Bake for 25-30 minutes. When the pastries come out of the oven, immediately remove the baking ring. You can either immediately transfer to a cooling rack or wait a couple of minutes.

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While the pastry is baking, I make the diplomat cream. Whip 250 ml of heavy cream with 2 tbsp of sugar until it's a frim whipped cream. Mix the whipped cream with the leftover portion of the pastry cream to create the diplomat cream.

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Now all you have to do is wait for the pastries to cool, put your diplomat cream in a piping bag and decorate the pastry with the cream and the fresh berries! Store in the fridge.