When I was young fresh fruit was a great treat and not common in Icelandic diet. Today fresh fruit of many sorts is readily available year round allowing one to bake galette year round!

Pastry:

1 cup flour (125-130g)

4 oz. cold butter unsalted (113g) 

pinch salt (or more if you like)

ice water (30-50ml, enough to make pastry workable)

Finely cut cold butter into flour, add salt. Work with spoon or hand until well mixed. Add ice water until pastry can be formed into a ball. Refrigerate for a bit (15 minute). Press pastry into a disk on parchment or Silpat then roll out very thin (thin=flaky). Refrigerate again (cold pastry I find much easier to work) while you make filling of choice.

Apple Filling:

2 or 3 apple peeled and sliced thin

2T sugar, 1T flour, cinnamon to taste mixed.

1T  butter

1T sugar, sprinkle cinnamon

Spread flour/sugar/cinnamon mixture over pastry. Lay apple slices to overlap in circle pattern. Fold edge of pastry over. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over apple, chop butter over apple. Refrigerate 10 minutes.

Cook at 204C or 400F for 50-minutes to 1 hour.

Glaze with 1 or 2 T (to taste) apricot, peach preserve.

Make coffee, pour brandy, consume!

I love making tarts! It's my new obsession! I've tried a couple recipes, but this French Date and Almond Tart is my absolute favorite... Well after some recipe testing and revisions. In fact, I love it so much that I'm officially naming it my signature pastry.

The first time I made it was for a get well dinner for a friend. She just had major surgery and was under some pretty hefty prescription drugs when I delivered her a lasagna, a fresh loaf of pain de champagne, and a tart. She opened the box with the tart and replied, "Oh! Isn't this what they serve to the queen?" I quickly nodded my head and walked her to her chair. Too funny.

-Colby

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A tart tale, in which a lovely pastry is enjoyed by three guests before falling prey to a crafty beagle.

http://gaaarp.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/old-fashioned-sweet-potato-tart-bake/

Have an excess of zucchini blossoms in your garden?  Here's what I did with a little leftover dough (Hamelman's French bread) thin sliced mortadella, fresh mozzerella. I tossed the zucchini blossoms with a little olive oil and S&P and tossed them on the pizza for the last minute or so in the oven.  Shaved some parmegiano reggiano on at the end and bellisima!  

I love this tart.  The fresh prunes are simply tossed with a little sugar (1/3 cup) and then baked in a tart shell for about 50 minutes.  

Hi all

After two frightening hydro bills, I decided that I needed to investigate more energy efficient methods for baking small items.  Typically I would heat up my full-sized conventional oven to bake a crust for cheesecake which would take 10-15 minutes after preheating for probably 15-20 minutes.  I still intend to use my large oven for bread, but I suspect many other things could be done more economically in a counter-top oven.

My toaster oven doesn't have convection or rotisserie features, but it seems well designed.  It has a crumb tray, rack, and aluminum pan.  With all of those in place, I tried baking chicken strips and was impressed how evenly they browned, and it even seemed faster than in the large oven.  I think I hadn't tried it sooner because I feared the cleanup, but the materials seemed to shed any debris very easily.  I used to use my George Foreman Party Time grill almost every day and it was an ordeal to clean but probably saved me a lot of hydro, though at the time I had a self-cleaning oven that was well insulated.

This morning I tried baking a Dutch Baby Apple Pancake crust in the toaster oven.  I didn't put the pan in this time, and I think that was a mistake because the oven burned the butter I was trying to melt before adding the batter.  The second attempt was with the pan and the butter melted well enough, though the crust didn't come out quite as well as in the conventional oven.

Because this toaster oven is 10" wide, I think I might try baking a tart crust or cheesecake crust in it, but of course these items have a lot of butter so I'm a bit nervous about it.  I don't have a working oven thermometer right now to test the accuracy of the temperature.

If anyone else has used a counter-top oven for small items, I would love to hear about any helpful tricks.  I'm not planning to try anything that takes much more than half an hour to bake.

If anyone has found a counter-top convection oven that bakes great cakes, that would be of interest, too!

Many thanks!

for the recipe at my food blog, click HERE

This tart made a delicious dinner. The tart was lighter than a traditional quiche because of the yeasted crust. We really enjoyed the Chard and saffron filling. (Hans: I’m thinking this is right up your alley and that you will come up with some magnificent variation!) I used crème fraîche in the dough but will use butter next time. Although the crème fraîche made the dough very tender, I think butter would have made the dough easier to work with and given the finished product a more flavorful crust. In other words, I thought the crust was a bit on the bland side.

The tart, dough and recipe, were adapted from The Greens Cookbook by Deborah Madison.

Yeasted Tart Dough

1 teaspoon instant yeast

¼ cup warm water

1 large egg, room temperature

150 to 200 grams flour (I used Guisto’s Baker’s Choice)

½ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons crème fraîche or soft unsalted butter

Dissolve the yeast in water. Combine 150 grams of the flour and salt in a medium bowl, and make a well. Break the egg into the middle of the well and add the crème fraîche or soft unsalted butter (I used crème fraîche, and an extra large egg, so had to add additional flour), and dissolved yeast.

Mix everything together with a flexible spatula, shape into a loose ball, cover and let rise until double, about 1 hour.

Chard and Saffron Tart

1 large bunch of chard, enough to make 8 cups of leaves roughly chopped

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, medium diced (about ¼” dice)

2 cloves garlic, finely diced or pressed

¾ teaspoon salt

3 eggs

1 ½ cups milk or cream or a combination of both (I used regular cream-topped milk)

Large pinch of saffron threads, soaked in 1 tablespoon of hot water

½ teaspoon finely grated fresh orange zest

6 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 1 1/2 ounces)

Nutmeg

2 tablespoons parsley, chopped

pepper

3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted in a dry pan

Prepare the yeasted tart dough and set aside to rise in a warm place.

Cut the chard leaves away from the steams and chop the leaves into pieces about 1 inch square, wash well, and drain in a colander.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and soak the saffron threads.

Heat the butter and oil in a large 12-inch skillet. Add the onions and cook over medium heat until soft and translucent (do not brown), about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, chard leaves and salt. Turn the leaves over repeatedly with tongs until they are tender, about 5 minutes. Set pan aside.

Prepare the tart shell: Flatten out the dough and place in a quiche pan (I used a 10” x 2” deep tin quiche pan with a removable bottom sprayed lightly with pan-spray)*. Press the dough out to the edge using your finger tips and up the sides. You can let the dough relax for 20 minutes if it starts shrinking back on you. I was only able to coax the dough about half-way up the side of the pan which was just high enough to hold the filling. The dough should be thicker on the sides and thinner on the bottom. I was pleased to see that as the tart baked both the dough and its filling rose up to the top of the pan.

Make the custard: beat the eggs, stir in the milk or cream, infused saffron thread liquid, orange zest, Parmesan, a few shaving of nutmeg, and the parsley. Stir in the chard and onion mixture, taste, and season with more salt if needed, and pepper.

Pour the filling into the tart shell and scatter the toasted pine nuts on top.

Bake until the crust is nicely browned and the custard is set, about 50 minutes. (I placed the quiche pan on a baking tray. If I had placed it directly on the rack, the baking time might have been shorter.)

Unmold and serve with a salad (I made a salad of butter lettuce and fresh navel orange slices tossed with a herb shallot walnut oil vinaigrette).

Serves 4 to 6

--Pamela

*If you don't own this type of deep quiche pan, I think you might be able to use an 8" inch spring-form cake pan. You don't have to worry about the filling leaking out because the tart dough is like bread dough.

Published on www.evilshenanigans.com - 3/23/09

A few nights ago my husband and I had the opportunity to have dinner with a very old friend.  We had not seen him in a very long time and during our time apart he had gotten married to a lovely doctor who brought to the marriage her beautiful daughter.  A year and a half ago they had an adorable daughter of their own.  His family is beautiful.  He is very lucky!

He invited us to meet his new family and, of course, we agreed.  I asked what I could bring for dessert, as that is kind of my thing, and he said anything chocolate.  SCORE!  So, for the girls I made a batch of Cream Filled Cupcakes, and for the adults I made a Chocolate Glazed Chocolate Tart.

This tart is incredibly easy to make, it looks spectacular, tastes like chocolate heaven, and as our friend's wife commented it would be the perfect canvas for experimenting with different flavors.  We all agreed raspberry, orange, and mint would be lovely.  I also think some ground toasted hazelnuts in the filling would be nice for flavor and texture.

I did make a few changes to the original recipe.  I could not find the chocolate graham crackers, which I have seen before but not this visit to the store, so I used chocolate wafer cookies.  Because they grind up finer than graham crackers I used more crumbs but I did not increase the butter.  It did not need it.  I also reduced the sugar because chocolate wafer cookies are quite sweet on their own.

If you have someone you want to treat may I recommend this tart?   It is divine!

Chocolate Glazed Chocolate Tart    Serves 10

For the crust:
1 1/2 cups ground chocolate cookies
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons sugar

For the filling:
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
9 ounces bittersweet (no more than 65%) chocolate, chopped
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the glaze:
2 tablespoon heavy cream
1 3/4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1 tablespoon warm water

Begin by mixing the cookie crumbs, butter, and sugar well and press it into a 9-inch round fluted tart pan.  Press the filling up the sides of the pan.  If you have a tart pan with 1″ sides only press it up 3/4 of the way.  (My tart pan has short sides, so I carried it to the top)

Bake at 350F for 10 minutes.  Allow to cool while you prepare the filling.

Heat the cream in a heavy pot over medium heat until it bubbles around the edges.  Pour it over the chopped chocolate and allow to sit for three minutes, then stir until it is well mixed and all the chocolate is melted.

In a small bowl mix the egg and vanilla.  Pour it into the melted chocolate and mix well.

Pour it into the prepared curst.

Gently tap the tart to break any air bubbles.

Place on a sheet pan and bake the tart for 20 minutes, or until the edges are just set and the center is still slightly wobbly.  Allow to cool for an hour.

As it cools make the glaze.

Heat the cream until it simmers and pour over the chocolate.  Stir to melt, then add the corn syrup and water.  Mix well.  Pour over the cooled tart, and gently tilt the tart to spread the glaze to the edges.  Let set for an hour at room temp before serving.