It’s official. I like rhubarb. Or at the very least I like raspberries enough that they cover up the taste of rhubarb.

I guess I should make a couple of other things with rhubarb before I profess my undying love for it. Someone on Flickr just commented that it’s good in an apple pie. I think I’m willing to try that. But I won’t be baking a strawberry rhubarb pie for myself anytime soon. I think I’m opposed to mushy strawberries.

At any rate, this is the second raspberry and rhubarb tart I’ve made and they’ve both been pretty delicious. I’ll even go so far as to say I think they’re more delicious than plain raspberry tarts and pies.

You probably want a recipe for this tart. But I can’t really give you one as I didn’t really use one. Make this like you would any other pie. Or follow the very, very loose directions below.

Start with a double batch of pie dough. Preferably homemade. But you can use premade dough if that’s what you do. Roll the dough to the appropriate size for your pie or tart pan. Line the pie or tart pan with one of the pieces of dough.

Toss the rhubarb (3 peeled stalks of it, chopped into 1/2″ pieces) and raspberries* with lots of sugar, a bit of arrowroot powder, a hint of cinnamon, an even smaller hint of nutmeg and a dash of lemon juice. Pour these into the dough lined pie or tart pan, dot the filling with a touch of butter and top with the second piece of rolled pie dough (or in my case, arrange the star shaped pieces of pie dough over the filling). If you use a solid piece of dough, cut a few slits in the top so that steam can escape while baking. If you don’t do this, you might have a soggy top crust.

Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown.

*Sorry, but I really don’t know how many raspberries I used. Maybe 2 cups?

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I woke up yesterday morning wanting to bake a coconut key lime tart. Where the idea came from is beyond me. But it sounded like a good idea and it was Saturday so I had plenty of time for baking.

My craving told me I wanted a normal key lime filling with a coconut graham cracker crust. In addition, I wanted whipped cream and toasted coconut on top. With specific details like this, you’d think I’d made this particular tart before. But I hadn’t.

I have made key lime tarts before. I think the last one I made was a little off but I can’t quite recall what was wrong with it. Rather than risk even the slightest failure, I went to the internet. After looking around the web a little, I found Peabody’s Camping Key Lime Pie with Coconut-Pecan Graham Cracker Crust. Her recipe looked perfect but I didn’t feel like running to the store for pecans or mascarpone cheese…so I left them out and altered the recipe.

Coconut Key Lime Tart

Both recipes printed here are very slightly adapted from the Key Lime Pie recipe found at the Culinary Concoctions by Peabody website.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup key lime juice, fresh if possible
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
• 5 egg yolks
• whipped cream (for garnish)
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup toasted coconut (for garnish)
• 1 coconut graham cracker pie crust (see recipe below)

Directions

1. Whisk sweetened condensed milk with the egg yolks.
2. Stir in whipping cream and key lime juice.
3. Pour into prepared coconut graham cracker crust and bake at 325° for 15 minutes.
4. Cool to room temperature and refrigerate for at least an hour before slicing.

Coconut Graham Cracker Crust

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups crushed graham cracker crumbs (approximately 12 graham crackers)
• 1/2 cup toasted sweetened coconut flakes, crushed into tiny pieces
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon coconut extract
• 6-7 tablespoons melted unsalted butter

Directions

1. In a food processor, blend together graham cracker crumbs, coconut, and sugar.
2. Add about 6 tablespoons melted butter. Pulse a few times. If it seems like it needs more butter add the remaining tablespoon.
3. Pour contents into an 11″ tart pan and press to form a shell.
4. Bake crust for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.

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My boyfriend is of the opinion that cranberries taste very similar to what he would expect potpourri to taste like. Not that he (or I) have ever eaten potpourri.

So he doesn’t care for cranberries and I kind of like them. This causes just a hint of strife when I mention baking something with cranberries. I’ve made at least a couple of things with cranberries in them this year in an attempt to get him to like them. I haven’t really had much success.

I found the recipe for this cranberry tart at The Kitchn and decided to make it today. I quickly warned the boyfriend that I was baking a tart today that he might not like. He may have groaned in response but knew that I was going to bake it whether he’d like it or not.

After dinner tonight, we tried the tart. While he may not have been crazy about it, he did say that he would eat it. He also said that someone who actually really likes cranberries would probably love it. That’s probably the best response I’m going to get out of a cranberry hater.

The recipe can be found here at The Kitchn.

I made very few alterations to their recipe. Instead of orange zest, I used the zest and juice of one Meyer lemon. Instead of mixing the walnuts into the filling, I used about a cup of them and put them on top so that they would remain crunchy. Other than that, I followed the recipe.

Oh, I used the pie crust recipe found here. Truthfully it’s the only pie crust I use these days.

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This is a crumb topped tart containing a mixture of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries & cranberries.

Despite the fact that I’m a little burnt out on this dessert, I am posting the recipe for it as it has been requested several times.

I made this mixed berry tart four times in the month of November. The first time was entirely by choice for a small party at home. The second time was not by choice and had to be prepped in a hurry very late at night and baked very early the next morning. The third time was for my family’s Thanksgiving dinner. And the fourth time should have overlapped the third time for the boyfriend’s family’s Thanksgiving dinner…but it didn’t. I baked the same tart twice in two days due to a slight communication error. So…I won’t be making this tart again for at least a few months. But I’ll share the recipe now so that someone else can enjoy it.

The bottom crust of the tart is the Flaky Pie Crust recipe from the book Sweety Pies. I previously blogged about this crust in October and you can find the recipe for the crust here.

The pictures here are of small individual tarts that I made…the recipes below are for making one large tart in an 11″ fluted tart pan. Or if you don’t have one of those, the recipes should work pretty well for a standard size pie plate.

Mixed Berry Tart

First, you will need to make a half recipe of the Flaky Pie Crust found here.

Next, you will need to make the crumb topping as listed below.

Crumb Topping

Recipe from Sweety Pies

Ingredients (for an 11″ tart)

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon until well mixed.

2. Work the butter in with a pastry blender (or your fingers) until the mixture resembles crumbs the size of tiny peas. Set aside.

Mixed Berry Filling

Ingredients (for an 11″ tart)

• 4 1/2 cups mixed berries (use any combination you want here – I used blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and cranberries in my tarts – but if you use just a couple of types of berries, it will still taste great!)
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon rind (I use freeze-dried lemon peel from Penzey’s)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare the crust in the tart pan and set aside.

2. Make the filling. Stir together the sugar and flour until well mixed. Gently stir in the berries, lemon rind and juice. Pour the mixture over prepared tart crust.

3. Sprinkle the crumb topping evenly over the the top of the pie.

4. Place tart in the oven on a cookie sheet or pizza pan large enough to catch any juices that might bubble over. You’ll regret it if you don’t put something under it and it does bubble over. Bake until crumb topping is golden brown, about 40-45 minutes.

4. As with any berry pies or tarts, cool to room temperature before slicing and eating.

5. Serve at room temperature, cold, or warm. It’s fantastic all three ways. It’s good plain and even better with a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

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For Wordless Wednesday info and more posts, go here.

The recipe for this S’mores Tart is here.

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Quote from American writer and poet James Whitcomb Riley.

I had lots of grand plans for peaches over the summer. I was going to pick peaches from one of the local pick-your-own farms. From there, I planned to make lots of peach preserves and freeze a ton of sliced peaches to use all winter…not to mention the things I wanted to bake with some fresh ones. Sadly I did not get a chance to pick any peaches. Life (including moving) got in the way of my peach plans.

I did, however, find some fairly local Virginia peaches on sale last month at the Whole Foods that recently opened in Richmond. They were only 99 cents per pound…so I bought enough to bake a peach pie. I should have bought a ton more of them but I wasn’t thinking ahead while shopping at Whole Foods. I was too busy trying to get my stuff and get out as the place was more than kind of a zoo.

The peach pie here was baked with some of Penzeys Apple Pie Spice and a bit of their Baking Spice. Other than that, I followed a recipe for blueberry crumb pie found in Sweety Pies.

The bottom crust is phenomenal….it’s so flaky. The crumb topping is pretty good as well.

I’m not going to type all of the directions for making and forming this crust as they’re pretty verbose. But I will give you the ingredients list and basic instructions for the flaky bottom crust.

Flaky Pie Crust

Recipe from Sweety Pies

Ingredients (for 9-inch double crust)

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chilled vegetable shortening
• 5 to 6 tablespoons very cold heavy cream

Directions

1. Sift together the flour, sugar and salt.

2. Using a pastry blender, cut the shortening into the flour mixture until it resembles small peas.

3. Sprinkle in cream one tablespoon at a time and toss with a fork. It’s better to add too little cream than too much. Continue to add cream and toss with fork until the dough holds together when pressed lightly.

4. Loosely gather dough into a flat ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before rolling dough.

This is where I won’t instruct you on how to make pie crust anymore. The directions for this particular crust go on for another page. That’s just too much information for a blog post. If you want to make a crumb pie like I did, simply halve the recipe above.

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