Courtney Follow Creator and author of No Dinner Before Dessert. Collector of delicious recipes. Wife of the luckiest husband in the world (at least that's what he tells me).

Tarts 2023

At a neighborhood market in October, I sold S’mores, Choco-Berry (BLackberry/Chocolate tart but with mixed berry jam), Pumpkin and these two new ones:

Baklava

I tried two versions of this one before hand and the winner went to the market.

The base was:
Honey Butter Cream (I also added 2 TBSP of milk to give it more of a whipped butter texture but maybe I just made too small a batch)

Or pastry cream

Topped with:
Baklava filling as seen here (I tried half pistachios and half walnuts) with cinnamon baked on their own for about an hour. Then pull the pan out of the oven and pour the syrup over. This gave it a dark roast which I was worried about to start with but tasted great in the final product. For the market I only had walnuts and roasted a little lighter. Still excellent but the dark roast definitely had some fans.

Topped with a flag of phyllo with butter layered between. I baked them with 4 layers but being homemade they were a good bit thicker than true phyllo. They also separated so I put 2 in each. They were super crispy and added a nice crunch.

Pina Colada

Pineapple jam
Whipped Coconut Cream
Mix about 60:40 whipped cream to jam. Scoop into tart shell. Top with Crystalized Pineapple
Also didn’t do yet but thinking about adding toasted coconut flakes too.

Change to the s’more tart: I added crushed graham crackers to the ganache! got that hint of cinnamon and less of a feeling of eating a bar of chocolate. Also a 1 fl oz cream to 1 oz couverture was perfect. Let it cool before scooping it and refridgerate before topping with marshmellow creme so it doesn’t move around.

Update to the pumpkin tart:
This cream cheese frosting recipe was great but I added an extra cup of powdered sugar to thicken it. Also that other recipe listed in the previous post - just make the pumpkin pudding from it and use only 2 C milk (so it’s a little thicker) and I used fresh whipped cream instead of whipped topping.

The neighborhood market went ok. It was too cold out but at least proved that people would buy the tarts. They’re so pretty they can’t resist!

For Thanksgiving:

Blackberry Pie

I love this blackberry pie recipe and had to turn it into a tart. I baked the blackberry pie filling without the crust and made a batch of pastry cream. I also used some extra tart dough to make little lattices to put on top.

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For Christmas:

Pumpkin
(I hadn’t made it for Christmas gifts yet)

Pina Colada
With the addition of toasted coconut. I also had a better idea of how much a batch of filling makes so I got more coconut cream than last time.

Citrus Tart
With a fluff proportion change. I made the Lemon curd, and orange and grapefruit as before but I didn’t go through the freezing process which made it much quicker and also a much better proportion of fluff. I put the grapefruit curd on the bottom, orange curd mixed with a medium amount of whipped cream and dollups of lemon curd mixed with a lot of whipped cream on top. With a couple of strips of candied citrus peel.

(For all of these that use whipped cream I used 1/2 C powdered sugar per pint of cream + 1 tsp vanilla. )

Almond

I made a batch of frangipane and scooped it into a large muffin tin with muffin cup papers and baked it at 350 for 10-15 minutes. After they cool down, put them in the fridge: they come out of the paper better when they’re cold.
Top with lemon+powdered sugar icing and toasted sliced almonds.

Triple Chocolate

I added 1/4 C of cocoa to the usual tart dough (full batch) to make it very dark.
I put a thin layer of Ganache on the bottom, topped by a good scoop of fluffy chocolate pudding. I made Jell-o Chocolate pudding with 1 1/2 C milk and after it chilled, added some whipped cream (similar to the pumpkin pudding). And then did little pointy mountains of whipped cream and dusted those with cocoa.

Peaches and Cream

I made peach gelatin with Simply Peach juice and unflavored gelatin - spread that in a small pan lined with plastic wrap and sprinkled small diced peaches for it to cool. The amount I made only needed 1 pack of gelatin and 1 C of juice. This made about 16 tarts. A circle of that goes in the bottom of the tart shell.
Then I mixed peach jam with whipped cream. And a large scoop of that is spread to mound slightly on top.

Raspberry Rose

I made the ususal pastry cream but instead of vanilla, put in 3/4-1 tsp rose water. I made a raspberry jam. Put a large scoop of rose pastry cream in the shell and I used a piping bag (make sure the tip is large enough for raspberry seeds to go through) and just ran the tip through the pastry cream to create a swirl of jam. Squeeze lightly.

Some interaction between the pastry cream and the jam makes the pastry cream split so this is definitely best fresh and covering seems to help it look better longer.

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