TWD—Quick Classic Berry Tart (The Really Quick, Cheap Way)

So I feel like this will be the most lame I’ve ever been with a TWD recipe.  Not sure why.  I think the big reasons are that I’m trying to use up things we have, and the only berries in the store that are even barely affordable are strawberries and I just didn’t want an all strawberry tart.   Oh, that and pastry cream—I just couldn’t make the pastry cream.  I feel pretty confidant in my ability to make it, I just couldn’t subject myself to eating too much of it.  You know what I mean?  I love the sweet tart dough.  Love the pastry cream.  And berries are at the top of my fruit list.  But I might have eaten way too much of a whole tart if I’d have made it.

Does that sound good enough for excuses?  Well, I DID make a couple of cute little quick tarts, but I (she said under her breath in shame) used instant fat free pudding for the pastry cream.  I only made half the sweet tart dough.  I could just bake a whole tart and not put anything in it and keep munching on the baked shell.  Dorie’s tart in her book is beautiful.  I might make it someday when berries are really in season.  It looks like a great dessert to impress.

So I made two 4 inch tarts and two little mini tarts in my mini muffin pan.  I ended up burning those two little ones to death.  Oops!  But the other tarts were perfect.  I had a half used box of instant banana pudding, so I whipped that up with some skim milk.  And I just happened to have also made some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies that had vanilla pudding in the dough, but not the whole box.  So I also made some of that.  I filled one tart with banana pudding and one with vanilla.  I sliced up a couple strawberries for one of the tarts and I had a fresh pineapple.  So I sliced some of that for the other tarts.  Then I did this---

The strawberry tart has the banana pudding.  That’s a cherry in the middle.  We had had breakfast for dinner and I’d made crepes.  I had some frozen cherries in the freezer and made a cherry compote to serve with the crepes (though banana/Nutella is everyone’s favorite). 

Here’s the pineapple/sunflower tart, which I think is just darling and was mighty tasty as well.

Yes, those are mini chocolate chips in the middle.  I know you were all wonderful how or if I would be able to incorporate chocolate in to this.  There you go. ;)

Get this.  After I made the tarts, I tucked them into the refrigerator to let the boys have them for snack the other night.  And I forgot about them and they had a popsicle instead.  When I remembered later that night I actually thought I’d let the boys have some for breakfast the next morning.  And I forgot about them again.  As “healthy” as I made these with the fat free pudding, I still didn’t want to eat them both myself.  I was afraid they weren’t going to still be good.  That night, I got ice cream out and while they were eating their ice cream, I saw the tarts.  So I pulled them out, cut them into four pieces each and offered them to the boys who were stuffing their mouths with chocolate ice cream.  Parker matter-of-factly said, “Oh, I don’t like tarts”.  (Never heard that one before.)  Taylor and Sam didn’t want any.  Scott obliged me and ate a little piece.  So since it was cut, I ate a few bites of each.  They were good.  I especially liked the pineapple.  I tucked them back into the fridge and the next day was Mother’s Day.  We had a yummy Belgian waffle breakfast, a simple, quick lunch before church then some Asian Chicken Pasta Salad for dinner.  And I made myself my favorite cake--Banana Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake (I used coconut oil and whole wheat pastry flour to make it a little more healthy) for dessert.  I’ve made it plenty of times and I don’t recall the boys going so gung-ho with it.  But they each ate two pieces, including Kevin and Sam.

And later on, I opened the fridge and saw those poor tarts.  Darn it.  Forgot again to at least get them out and offer them to anyone who wanted some.  After school today (Monday) I got them out for the kids to eat as a snack after school.  They actually still looked pretty good.  When the boys got home, Scott is the only one who wanted some, so he ate both tarts that were almost still all there.  But I discovered a danger for me.  He doesn’t care for the crust and kept leaving it on  the plates.  I picked at some of the leftover, rejected crust, then I was a good girl and threw away a lot of it or else I’d have eaten it all and I just can’t do that.  So the tarts were great and I can only imagine they’d have been even better with real pastry cream and lots of fresh berries.

Poor delicious little tarts.

Yes, that’s a banana slice underneath the chocolate chips.  I didn’t look at its condition three days after making the tart, but Scott ate it.  So thank you, Cristine, from Cooking With Cristine for a great pick for the week.  I will do it more justice someday.  Cristine will have the recipe on her blog.

Please come back tomorrow as I’ve got some of the best cookies (Toffee Cowboy Cookies) I’ve ever made coming up and I’ll share those oatmeal  chocolate chip pudding cookies in the next couple days as well as more pictures of four the the cutest boys in the whole world! ;)