With the warm summer months now upon us in the US, it’s only natural that we’re eating a lot more of what’s considered to be “summer fruits”. When it’s a hot day, we naturally gravitate to lighter foods. It’s hard to even consider baking pumpkin pies or making a full-on Thanksgiving dinner when the mercury rises (though it’s sometimes what we contend with in southern California when it’s not uncommon to have temps in the 80’s on Thanksgiving day). Tell me… how can one resist the juicy summer fruits when they’re all over the Farmer’s Markets and grocery stores? Obviously I can’t and sometimes find I get ahead of myself and buy too much! And then I need to be somewhat creative in using them. Fruit tarts are pretty simple and a rather elegant way of turning summer fruits into a beautiful dessert that looks like you spent hours making.
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Posted in fruit, recipes, tart | 6 Comments »
The end of yet another month is upon us and that means it’s time for yet another Daring Bakers reveal :) The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.
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Posted in cinnamon, daring bakers, fruit | 16 Comments »
While it’s taken a whole lot longer than I actually anticipated, I’ve seemingly gotten my new site up and running with only the smallest of minor glitches. Honestly, I can’t really complain and I’m pretty darned proud of myself :) Self hosting. Shared hosting. Servers. html. css. php. htaccess. It started off as being so very confusing but now I think I’ve collected all the dots… and I’m finally starting to connect them. I certainly learned a lot along the way and in the end it’s a good feeling knowing I completed a “DIY” project on my To Do list. I made these key lime tarts when I was in the final stages of gettng the site ready and they were a terrific pick-me-up. They’re very tart… very good… and very very rewarding. Now that we’ve hit those warm months of summer (hey, it was 102°F here today!) this is a wonderful hot-weather dessert. Whether you make them as cute little 3″ tartletts or go for a full 9″ tart, no matter, you’ll still get plenty of raves!
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Posted in fruit, recipes, tart | 15 Comments »
This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe was the Chocolate Cream Tart selected by Kim of Scrumptious Photography. Once again I couldn’t quite bring myself to do the just standard recipe and instead decided to play around with flavor combinations. I made a total of three tarts… two 4″ and one 6″. This one above is a 4″ Chocolate Banana Cream tart. A thin layer of banana flavored cream followed by a thick layer of banana flavored chocolate filling and topped with a layer of banana flavored whipped cream. DH picked this combo and I used Banana Cream Rum for the flavoring. It was a total winner in his book! I had to rush and get photos because he couldn’t wait to taste this… and once he started, well, the nom-nom-nom sounds were not far behind. He LOVED this! But remember, I made a total of three tarts. Sooooooo…. care to see the other two?
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Posted in Chocolate, Dorie Greenspan, Tuesdays with Dorie, fruit, lemon, tart | 21 Comments »
The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. At this point I can’t count the number of times I’ve made cheesecake but I suppose there’s always room for one more recipe ;) This time I enlisted DH and the kids to help me decide on a flavor and we came to a compromise decision. You see, they wanted chocolate (don’t they always want chocolate? LOL) and I wanted citrus… so one of the cheesecakes was orange with a chocolate ganache top. Satisfied us all :) But I also had another type of fruit gazing at me wistfully from the counter…
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Posted in cheesecake, daring bakers, fruit | 18 Comments »
