Fresh Fruit Tartelettes

I made these a while ago and debated on whether or not to post the recipe, mainly because it’s long and I’m lazy. This recipe was really involved and I just didn’t feel like typing it all out. But these have a fantastic taste with the berries and the cream, and they look beautiful when assembled. I will definitely make them again, so I finally decided to bite the bullet and post them. It's not really hard, it just takes a lot of time to put together.

I made the pastry cream and tart dough in advance and assembled the tarts the next day. It was my first attempt at making pastry cream, which is why I chose a Cook’s Illustrated recipe; they take a lot of the guess work out of things.

I wound up with A LOT of extra pastry cream. I froze it, so it wouldn’t go bad until I could think of a way to use it up. I ended up just making some fruit parfaits with Grand Marnier whipped cream and quinoa clusters.

The pastry cream tasted fine after being frozen for a week or so; the texture was a bit off, but mixed with fruit and whipped cream you couldn’t really tell. Next time I will scale down the pastry cream recipe so I don’t have so much leftover.

Strawberry Meringue Tartelettes

The end of the local strawberry season is almost here, so I’m trying to think of all the strawberry recipes I can make while they are still at their peak. My mom used to make strawberry meringue pie in the summer that I always liked. I didn’t want to make a whole pie for just two people, I thought individual tartelettes would be better. If I had more than I thought we could eat, I figured I could freeze a few of the tartelettes. However, we had no problem polishing these off in a matter of days. A perfect recipe for summer; the better the strawberries, the better the taste. The local berries I bought were so sweet that I only needed to add 1 Tbl sugar to the berries. My favorite part of this dessert is the layer of meringue, I don’t know why, I just love it. If you want to make a 9" pie instead of tartelettes, simply double the filling ingredients.

Dark Chocolate Tartelettes with Gingersnap Crust

This week it was time to use up the extra ginger crinkles I had sitting around. I was really excited to make this chocolate tart. The original recipe makes one large tart, but I decided to halve the recipe and make individual tartelettes. With the hint of cinnamon, these tarts reminded me of the cappuccino brownies I made awhile ago. The combination of the gingersnap crust and the dark chocolate is fantastic. Next time (I will be making this again, for sure) I plan on adding a tsp or two of espresso powder because I just love the combination of chocolate and coffee. I had some strawberries in the fridge (since they are finally in season) which I used to garnish the tarts. You can’t go wrong with strawberries, dark chocolate, and whipped cream.