Tag Archives: dessert

Stone Fruit Tartlet

July 15, 2015 – 6:25 PM

You guys.

Someone (who I used to work with and who used a gaming headset for work and once embarked on gathering customer feedback unknowingly calling people using the “space chipmunk” voice setting on his headset) shared with me what I am sure is the 8th wonder of the world.

Go into Google Hangouts and type in /ponystream . Go on, I’ll wait.

Welcome to your changed life! Maybe My Little Pony isn’t as big a deal at your house as it is in mine, but it takes up a lot of bandwidth over here. One of my kids has a Fiverr business where she will draw you in My Little Pony style as well as a YouTube channel dedicated to pony drawing.

Now that it’s summer we’re spending more time at the beach, but My Little Pony is always with us.

Plus a little beach volleyball.

And the other great thing about summer? Stone fruits. Loquats, peaches, apricots, nectarines…so sweetly wonderful right now.

You could just eat them raw. You wouldn’t be sorry.

But maybe sometimes you want get a little fancy. Feel a bit like the queen. For that, you should make a tartlet.

We got these tartlet pans for our wedding 14 years ago and I finally thought NOW IS THE TIME. I only really make simple recipes, so this is what I did.

STONE FRUIT TARTLET

Makes 6 4-inch tartlets.

Ingredients

Filling

3 cups of pitted stone fruit, such as peach, loquat, or nectarine, chopped
1/2 cup coconut palm sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces
1 cup rolled oats

Crust

2 cups flour
1/2 cup coconut palm sugar
1 cup butter

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Crust: Mix the flour, palm sugar and butter with an electric mixer til crumbly, about 2 minutes. Press the mixture into six 4-inch tartlet pans, so that it’s about 1/4 inch thick. Bake for about 20 minutes, checking frequently after 10 minutes, til the crust is lightly browned.

Filling: While the crusts cool, raise the oven temperature to 400 F. Toss the stone fruits in a large bowl with 1/4 cup of the palm sugar and 1/4 cup of flour. Spoon the mixture onto the tartlet crusts.

Put the remaining flour and butter into a food processor and pulse until the clumps are about the size of a pea. Add in the remaining palm sugar and rolled oats and pulse to combine. Press the mixture over the stone fruits.

Bake until the stone fruits are tender and the topping is a golden brown. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream if desired.

Tags apricot, dessert, easy, loquat, nectarine, peach, stone fruit | Permalink | Comments Off

Cooking Food

Apricots with Mascarpone Cream

June 22, 2014 – 6:16 PM

I am currently in that circle of hell reserved for people who blog about food but cannot eat it. I’ve had some kind of stomach virus (I think. Or it could be worms. That is exactly what I need. Worms.) since last weekend and though I hadn’t been hungry all week, I am very hungry now but the stomach is not accepting donations.

I’ve generally been feeling weird lately, and part of it I attribute to aging. I can’t remember anything anymore. I recently went away on a girls’ weekend (which, sadly, ended at some point) and the whole weekend was full of conversations like:

“So I have a friend that lives in…African country! Abject poverty! Blood diamonds!”

“The Congo?”

“Right! This is just like that game…shouting out clues! Have to guess the word! Board game!”

My friends and I, we are losin’ it. But the good news is that soon we won’t remember to care.

The other good news is that it’s apricot season. Apricots just look so…peachy to me — like a teenaged girl with good skin (I would never know what that’s like). I got a box of apricots from my CSA and made this dessert which I promise may be the best thing I’ve ever tasted (it’s large category, that.). Seriously though it is incredibly awesome, like as awesome as if your tongue were a skating rink and Olympic skaters were winning the gold medal on it.

Some incredibly gifted person named Miki posted this on Allrecipes but I modified it a bit to add a bit of citrus and floral aromas, substituting lemon curd for apricot nectar, marmalade for apricot preserves and using a violet flavored balsamic vinegar .

APRICOTS WITH MASCARPONE CREAM adapted from Allrecipes

Ingredients

1 cup whipping cream
3 TBSP sugar
4 oz mascarpone cheese
2 TBSP lemon curd
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 pinch ground cardamom
3 TBSP marmalade
1/4 cup honey
1 TBSP balsamic vinegar (I used violet flavored vinegar)
8 fresh apricots, pitted and halved

Preparation

Beat the cream in a chilled bowl with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Beat in the sugar and set aside. In another bowl, whip the mascarpone cheese with an electric mixer until very soft; beat in the lemon curd, vanilla extract, and cardamom. Gently fold the mascarpone mixture into the whipped cream.
Place the marmalade and honey into a microwave-safe bowl and heat in microwave oven until warm but not hot, about 30 seconds. Mix well and stir the balsamic vinegar into the honey mixture.
Stuff each apricot half with a dollop of the mascarpone cream and place the filled apricot halves on a serving dish. Drizzle the fruit and plate with balsamic sauce and serve.

Serves 8 (or 1, if it’s me).

Tags apricots, cream, dessert, easy, fruit, mascarpone, summer | Permalink | Comments (3)

Baking

Gluten-free Chocolate Quinoa Cake

February 13, 2014 – 8:16 PM

The world is awash today with images of hearts and chocolate. Happy Valentine’s Day, friends. I know what you’re thinking. Chocolate, hearts, berries…but what’s Valentine’s Day without quinoa? I hear you, ye tired, hungry and gluten-free. Because having quinoa in your cake is like having dinner together with dessert. It’s just more efficient.

I happened upon this recipe at the Week of Menus blog. She must cook during the day because she has way better lighting than I do, and is reflecting on how to be a better mother while I am just thinking about my hair and thinking about how I can make dinner into a dessert. (I cut my hair. After a couple of weeks of awkward silences and people averting my gaze trying not to comment on it while I was figuring out how to work with it, I have finally found a way to make it look effortlessly tousled which requires way more time than if I tried to make it look like I made a concerted effort. But such is the price of beachy.)

Week of Menus has done a good job laying out the recipe, so I’ll just link to it below, but the basic gist is that you mix the quinoa in a blender with a bunch of stuff and end up with a batter that looks like this:

Bake it like she tells you to. I’m sorry, but making my hair look effortlessly tousled has drained me of my will to share detail. You’ll end up with a cake.

Then you can cut a heart out of wax paper, snowflake-style: