Classic Fruit Tart, part 3 (assembly)

Alrighty, let's finish this thing up. You're going to need: a pre baked tart shell, vanilla custard, some melted white or dark chocolate, an assortment of fruit (whatever you like) and some apricot jam.

Classic Fruit Tart, part 2 (custard)

No intro for this post because it's a "part 2". So lets just get into it. . .  

Just FYI, this vanilla custard recipe is from the Woodland Bakery Blog. You can find it here.

Classic Fruit Tart, part 1 (crust)

Over the 5 years that I worked in the bakery at our local grocery store I made about 1,000 fruit tarts. They were seriously a customer favorite. We didn't really make them from scratch and over the years the process and style of the tarts changed and evolved. No matter the version, they essentially consisted of a pastry crust, filled with vanilla custard and topped with fresh fruit and glaze. In making the tarts my job was one of assembly: putting together pre-made parts and topping with fruit. As you can imagine, by the time I left the bakery I was fruit-tarted out. If I never halved another strawberry or peeled another kiwi it was fine by me. I was D-O-N-E. Donezo, fo show!

Now, believe it or not, in all that time at the bakery, I had never actually had a fruit tart. Never tasted one in spite of the 1,000 tarts I had made. Not that I don't like fruit, or vanilla custard, or pastry. Totes like all those things, its just that other stuff in the dessert case appealed to me more. I'd always go for the slab of chocolate cake, the fudge topped eclaire or a luscious lemon pie. Seriously, why waste dessert calories on fruit? I'm not crazy. And then I finally had a slice. Pretty yummy. Fresh and fruity, vanilla-y and custardy and a cookie crust to boot. Why had I not tried one before? Why had I not made one before. They're easy to make (although lots of steps) and impressive. Silly me. 

Now, first things first. For a good fruit tart, you need to start with a good crust. . . 

(Note: I doubled the recipe so quantities in the pictures are twice what the recipe calls for. This dough will freeze pretty much indefinitely and it's nice to have on hand next time you want to make a tart.)

Breakfast Muffin Parfaits

I have a confession to make: I like sweets for breakfast. Seriously, if there was no nutritional downside, I'd eat danish, muffins, pancakes with syrup, donuts, waffles and coffee cake for breakfast each and every day. I admit it,  I have a raging sweet tooth and breakfast is no exception. But there is a downside. Like mega calories, no protein, lots of sugar, etc., etc., etc.. So I don't eat those things, except for occasionally on the weekends. I still want them though and these last few months I've gotten in the bad habit of having a blended mocha for breakfast. Home made, and really not too terribly loaded with calories, about 250. But no nutritional benefit. Seriously, not a redeeming ingredient in them. They're just so tasty and convenient. I can sip on them while still going about my morning routine. Then two hours later I'm crazy hungry. This is not a good habit.

My bad breakfast is not a new realization, I've know it all along, it just got time to get real with myself and kick the habit. As much as I abhor New Year's Resolutions, after the nutritional debauchery of December, I resolved to start my days with a better breakfast. This recipe looked like a good start. Some decent nutritional value, portable (I can easily take it to work), convenient (make ahead on the weekends), easy (a pretty simple recipe) and still sweet. Check it out. . .

Strawberries and Cream Cake

Note: I had this post all written and ready to publish a couple of days ago. Sometime during my writing, our internet went out, unbeknownst to me. So I just kept typing away, hitting save here and there and thinking everything was A-OK. Then, like I always do, I hit save one more time, shut down my browser and walked away. I like to let my posts kind of marinate in my mind, then come back a couple of minutes, hours, days later and re-read them one more time before publishing, just to make sure it still reads like I want it to. So when I came back, none, I mean NONE of my work had been saved. It was just the pictures and a couple of rough sentences. AGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I was dejected, crushed, the wind had been taken out of my sails. It then took me a day or two to get my thoughts back together and rewrite the post. And the point in telling you all this is: "I'm sorry this post is so over due. I hope you haven't abandoned my blog. Please stick with me." Ok, so, here's the post:

Even though it's past Labor Day, and even though it rained the other day, and even though the kids are all back at school, I'm still not quite ready to let summer go. Fall is just around the corner and all kinds of fall dishes are waiting to be made in my kitchen. I'm totes looking forward to stews and chowders and a whole slew of spicy pumpkiny desserts. I'm just not quite ready for them just yet.

This cake captures summer for me. It's light, fresh and clean. And a cinch to make. I mean super duper easy. It was the perfect dessert with which to wrap up summer. And so, on Labor Day, we did. Prolong summer just a bit longer with this cake. . .

Strawberries & Cream Scones

They say, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." But in my world, when life hands you an almost out of code carton of cream and some strawberries on their last days, you make Strawberries and Cream Scones. I really, really can't bare to throw out food. So when I ended up with a handful of strawberries that were a bit too old to just eat but really not bad, something had to be done. So I whipped up a batch of scones. I'm using my scone shortcut (a box of biscuit mix) because, well because it's easy, and I had it on hand. I also love a recipe that comes together out of necessity and I loved the fact that I made this work with what I had on hand. No extra trips to the store, believe me when I tell you, that doesn't happen often. This recipe is easy and straight forward so let's cut with the chit chat and get started. . .

Apple Sharlotka

I saw this recipe on the Smitten Kitchen blog and new that I wanted to try it. It was quite a while ago and I've waited. Waited because my husband doesn't like cooked apples. That's right. No apple pie, no apple turnovers, nada, nichts, nothing. I've waited because there were birthday cakes to make and little league treats to bake. Waited because there's been house work to do, because I changed jobs, because time has a way of slipping by unnoticed while you're busy doing stuff. Finally, last week, I'd waited long enough. It was time to try this recipe or unbookmark it and let it go. So I tried it.

The rustic simplicity of the recipe and ingredients piqued my interest. Could such simple, dare I say "plain", ingredients deliver. Would the whole be greater than the sum of it's parts? Could you make a cake without butter? Could you make a pie without a crust? What would this be? Breakfast? Dessert? I had to find out. . .

Fruit Salsa

This is the perfect appetizer for 4th of July. It's simple, delicious and guilt free. Well, ok, it does have sugar but it also has lots of fresh fruit. Oh and it's pretty. Bright red and shiny. Perfect for your next BBQ. I love to bring this to our friend's houses because it's unexpected. It totally outshines the standard old cut fruit platter but still brings fruit to the party. Why risk being another creamy chip and dip offering, go for the fruit. 

And I have to give a shout out to my friend Tabetha. Years ago she hosted a recipe exchange and this (her recipe) is one of the recipes I walked away with and have used again and again. I hope you will to. Thanks Tabetha!