Summer Fruit Tarts
Much as the IK would love to blame her recent internet silence on European travel or a fancy sea voyage, she’s been here all along, living her workaday if extremely annoying life. A life which has conspired, at every moment, to prevent her from posting.
Rather than detail these piddling events–they don’t make for entertaining reading–let us share some lowlights. There was the fellow who mistook Instagram for a dating app. Never mind that the IK has never expressed the faintest interest in extramarital adventures. Or her efforts to hide her face and figure–hardly the stuff of supermodel lore–from social media. This guy kept on.
There was sitting down Monday to work on this post, only to have the power fail.
There was sitting down Tuesday to work on this post, only to have the power fail again.
Now, none of this compares to recent events in London or Iran, which are heartbreaking.
Nay, we will attempt once more to discuss pie crust. With fruit fillings.
(We’ll also continue recycling, composting, buying local and riding public transit whenever possible. Because the planet is not ours to trash.)
People are taught to be terrified of making pie crust. We’re taught it’s fussy and fragile, weather sensitive, the province of experts.
Baking requires a precision that cooking does not. This said, if a woman unable to drive stick shift or eat with chopsticks can manage tart dough, you can, too.
The following tarts use Deb Perelman’s recipe, found in the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and Smitten Kitchen blog. There’s a reason Deb is beloved. Her recipes work. Even for first-time tart bakers with incapacitating carpal tunnel syndrome and weird, poorly understood collagen diseases.
The jam recipes come from Eugenia Bone’s The Kitchen Ecosystem.
Owners of the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook will notice the photographic disparity between Deb’s tart crusts and mine. Hers are perfectly rounded circles with neatly pleated edges. The tarts emerging from the IK are, um, rustic.This hasn’t stopped people from gobbling them up, so I don’t trouble myself and neither should you. An acquaintance of mine died last week from cancer. She wasn’t 40. We’re going to worry about how a tart looks? No. We are not.
Recipes are separated–the tart shell and two fillings–for clarity.
A note about the many photographs of cherries: it’s been that kind of two weeks.
Deb Perelman’s All Butter, Really Flaky Pie Dough
This is Deb Perelman’s recipe, not mine. It appears on the Smitten Kitchen Website and in the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. She deserves all the credit for it. I get none.
Yield: enough for 2 open pies or tarts or 1 double-crust pie.
Note: dough needs 1 hour chilling time to make one open tart.
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon table salt (I used fine sea salt)
16 ounces cold unsalted butter; I used Kerrygold (tuck it in the freezer until you’re ready to use it.)
1/2 cup ice cold water (I fill a Pyrex measuring cup and stash it in the fridge)
Instructions
Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl that’s wide rather than deep.
Remove butter from freezer. Using a sharp knife, dice butter into small pieces. Add to bowl.
If butter becomes too soft at any time, stop and put it back in the freezer.
Using fork, pastry blender, or fingertips, rub flour and butter together until mixture is rubbly. Flour and butter should be pea-sized. If the butter gets too warm, tuck entire bowl into the freezer or refrigerator for five minutes or so to cool down.
Pour water over the flour/butter mixture and stir together with a spatula. It might seem dry. Don’t worry. It will cohere.
Either knead in bowl, or, my preference, dump everything onto a counter or marble board, should you have such an object, and knead lightly until dough coheres. Handle as minimally as possible.
Bring dough into a large square. Using a bench scraper or large knife, divide evenly into two pieces. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap.
You now have enough dough to make two open-faced tarts or one double-crust pie. You can refrigerate both pieces up to one week, for freeze up to three months.
Assuming you want to bake one tart, refrigerate one wrapped portion for at least one hour. Refrigerate or freeze other portion for another pie/tart adventure.
Congratulations! You’ve just made pie crust!
Notes: Perelman gives instructions for making dough using a food processor. I prefer doing this by hand. It’s less washing up, and I’ve found my processor chokes on jobs like this one.
To defrost frozen dough: defrost in your refrigerator. I’ve done it on my countertop, but it requires vigilance and a cool kitchen. Proceed for use in recipes, below.
Open-faced Tart with Cherry Marzipan Filling
Yield: One 8-9 inch tart
Baking time: 30-40 minutes (assumes you have jam and tart dough to hand)
1 recipe tart dough, chilled and ready to roll out
1 7-ounce tube marzipan
1 half-pint (8 ounces) Eugenia’s Baked Cherry Jam or 8 ounces of your favorite Cherry Jam
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
1 large egg, beaten, mixed with 1 teaspoon water
all-purpose flour, for the counter and rolling pin
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400F.
Line a large, heavy baking sheet–at least 11-17 inches–with parchment paper or a Silpat
Scatter a rolling pin and countertop generously with flour.
Remove the dough from the fridge. Unwrap dough and flour the top of it. Begin rolling dough out, from the center to the edges, moving it in quarter turns. You are aiming for a rough circle. The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook has a photo of a beautiful tart with perfect edges. Mine never look like this: they’re rough-edged and craggy. The people who eat them never seem to notice.
If the dough begins to stick, gently work it free with a bench scraper or metal spatula and add a bit of flour. If it’s getting too warm, place on the baking sheet and pop it in the freezer. No room? Use the fridge.
Once you have a decent circle–I sometimes trim it with a knife–lay it gently on the baking sheet. Set trimmings aside.
Flour the rolling pin and counter again.
Opening the marzipan is half the battle. Once you’ve managed that, slice off about five ounces and roll it out into a rough oblong. Flour rolling pin and counter generously: marzipan likes to stick. Don’t worry if it breaks. Nobody sees this part. Lay your marzipan oblong atop the tart shell, leaving a 2-inch border. Add patches where necessary. Wrap leftover marzipan freezing, for future tart adventures.
Open the jam and stir in almond extract, if using. Spoon over the marzipan, again leaving a 2-inch border. Fold the edges of tart dough over, crimping, pleating, or folding as you go. Don’t worry about making this perfect. Rustic is the name of the game here.
Brush the edges with the beaten egg and slide into the oven. Bake 30-40 minutes: the tart will puff dramatically and look quite done. Mine take about 35 minutes.
Cool on rack before slicing.
Tart will keep at room temperature, well-wrapped, about three days. It also freezes well.
I’ve found tarts freeze well, reheat nicely in both microwave and conventional ovens.
Notes:
Dough trimmings may be frozen, but I like to either twist them gently to make a lattice, as show in the photograph, or roll few small pieces, add bits of marzipan and/or fruit, and make free-form dumplings, which I bake alongside the tart. Nigel Slater, writing in The Kitchen Diaries, says he likes to sprinkle trimmings with sugar, bake, and eat them with coffee.
Open-Faced Fresh Fruit Tart
The tart dough comes from Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and also appears on the Smitten Kitchen blog. The jam filling comes from Eugenia Bone’s The Kitchen Ecosystem.
I baked this for a potluck where a nut-free dessert was needed.
Yield: One 8-9 inch tart
Prep Time: 30-40 minutes baking time
1 recipe tart dough, chilled and ready to roll out
1 half-pint (8 ounces) Eugenia’s Baked Cherry Jam, or 8 ounces of your favorite cherry jam. Strawberry jam also works here.
Approximately 6 ounces fresh strawberries, cherries, or a mixture, washed, hulled, pitted, and sliced in half.
1 teaspoon sugar, optional
1 large egg, beaten, with a teaspoon of water stirred in
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400F.
Line a large, heavy baking sheet–at least 11×17 inches–with parchment paper or a Silpat
Scatter a rolling pin and countertop generously with flour.
Remove the dough from the fridge. Unwrap dough and flour the top of it. Begin rolling dough out, from the center to the edges, moving it in quarter turns. You are aiming for a rough circle. The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook has a photo of a beautiful tart with perfect edges. Mine never look like this: they’re rough-edged and craggy. The people who eat them never complain.
If the dough begins sticking, gently work it free with a bench scraper or metal spatula. Add a bit of flour. If it’s getting too warm, place on the baking sheet and pop it in the freezer. No room? Use the fridge.
Once you have a decent circle–I sometimes trim it with a knife–lay the dough gently on the baking sheet. Set trimmings aside.
Using a pastry brush or large spoon, brush the tart dough with the egg wash. Now spread the jam over the pastry, leaving a 2-inch border.
Scatter the fresh fruit atop the jam, again, leaving a 2-inch border. Don’t overstuff the tart or it will leak–not the end of the world, but avoidable at this juncture. You want a nice topping– not a toppling.
Fold the edges of the tart over, making a rough border, pleating a bit. Rustic is okay here. Brush edges with remaining egg wash.
Scatter a teaspoon of sugar over the fruit if you wish. This depends on your sweet tooth and the fruit itself; taste it if you aren’t sure.
Place tart in oven, baking 30-40 minutes, until puffed and edges are lightly browned. Cool on a rack.
Tart will keep at room temperature, well-wrapped, about three days.
I’ve found tarts freeze well, reheat nicely in both microwave and conventional ovens.
Any leftover bits of dough may be used to make a lattice or may be rolled out and filled with any extra jam or fruit, formed into rough dumplings, and baked alongside the tart.
Notes: Deb Perelman, writing in the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, leaves the cherries unpitted in her tart recipe. My husband suffers from impaired breathing due to neuromuscular disease. The last thing he needs is to choke on a cherry pit.
