
Fruit Tart was on my mind not just because of July 4, and not just because we had a lovely fruit tart at Piccolo Forno in June, but also because recently, Marzipan blogged about a Fresh Fruit Tart. Her tart is gorgeous, the fruit beautifully and artfully arranged, so aesthetically appealing. An outer ring of blueberries & raspberries, then a ring of strawberries all facing the same way (pointy ends facing out), then a ring of blackberries, a ring of kiwi, a ring of raspberries, and in the very center, a single strawberry slice surrounded by a blueberry ring. Her tart crust is a pate sucree and her filling a lemon curd.
Our fruit tart is a shortbread crust with a vanilla cream filling and topped with strawberries, blueberries, and cherries. Both the crust and the filling recipes are from The Joy of Cooking.
The crust is a shortbread crust with some grated lemon zest for an extra nice, bright flavor:

On to the filling. The filling is a vanilla cream filling - mmm vanilla bean simmering in milk:




Pretty soon, he wanted to 'help' so that it would be ready faster. I got annoyed with him for not letting me take my time to make a pretty tart for a pretty photo, and then I got annoyed because he had distracted me enough that, instead of my berry slices being fat end out, they had become pointy end out, which ruined the pretty look - the outer ring of strawberry slices was not uniform. At that point there was no hope of salvaging it and making it pretty, so I got frustrated and more annoyed and started slapping fruit on any which way. The extreme heat of July 4 and my consumption of much wine weren't helping my patient, painstaking fruit placement either (or my not so patient, not so painstaking fruit placement).
So what you see at the top of this post is what our guests got!
It tasted fine, it just didn't look like a work of art, but I suppose artful food is not necessary.
There's always next year for a pretty tart... SP can help make the individual parts next year, but he is banned from the kitchen when I put my fruit on top!
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