Lemon Cream Cheese Tarts

I just spent a week in beautiful Smithers, British Columbia (ok technically it was Telkwa but close enough). One of my close friends, Lisa, got married to a great guy and I was fortunate enough to spend a week up there. Lisa has an amazing family and I was honoured to be a recipient of their hospitality. In an effort to contribute to the wedding festivities I offered help in whatever manner would be most useful. I was put to work in the kitchen, which as you can imagine, was no inconvenience for me. I got to try new recipes and I was happy to be a part of wedding central.

Lemony Cream Cheese Goodness

Lisa’s girl’s night was a fun night and on the menu were these gems. Lisa’s mom made the shortbread tart shells so I am only partially responsible for this posting. She is an great baker and chef and I was lucky to complete the recipe.  These tarts are amazing bundles of cream cheese lemony goodness and oh yeah, there is condensed milk in them. Can you imagine anything better? This is a Best of Bridge recipe and the recipe is available on their website. I made the cheese version but their plain lemon filling looks great too.

The flowers and raspberries were courtesy of Lisa’s mom garden, a magical place to be sure.  I will definately be sharing these with my family and won’t be surprised if they become a favorite of ours.

TWD Tartest Lemon Tart

Lucky for Caroline, who is the baker for the month of May due to my yucky studying, we made this yummy treat for Easter. In our family there is an element of fussiness that accompanies all holiday dessert menu planning. Some can’t eat chocolate, some don’t eat meringue and some aren’t into cheesecakes. So usually this means multiple desserts to ensure full and happy tummies all around. This Easter, our big sis who is not a baker at heart, put in a request for a Nigella recipe which we will eventually get around to posting. Since that one had chocolate, there had to be a non-chocolate dessert. I had my eyes set on a different lemon tart but due to insufficient ingredients (and laziness) in the kitchen we started scouring our books for other recipes for a similar dessert, which brought us to this recipe! I must confess that I grumbled through the making of this tart because it wasn’t quite what I had envisioned and grumbled even louder when it came out of the oven looking nothing like the lemon tart I wanted to make. But in the end I was pleasantly surprised. The end product was a lovely lemon treat to take the place of our usual lemon meringue pie, which of course some people won’t eat!
You can head on over to Babette Feasts for the recipe. Thanks for choosing a yummy recipe!

Sorry for the not-so-stellar picture! The excitement of Easter is to blame!

Our first Tuesdays with Dorie

Well, I started the new year with our first TWD (thanks to Laurie for opening it up!). I figure a bit of a rough start means that there is no where to go but up. This Tuesday’s recipe, French Pear Tart on pages 368 and 369 was a challenging start for me as I am not a pie maker. As well, there are a ton of nut allergies in my workplace so I needed to make a nut-free tart. I took my situation to my good friend George, who is not only a nice guy but a total foodie, who better to ask for advice. George recommended a honey-vanilla cream instead so that is what I went with. I sure hope it counts because there is some serious artistic license going on here since I didn’t actually make a baked tart. I should have checked the P & Q section and then I would have seen that someone made the baked tart without the almonds, alas, I didn’t and thus I went with a fruit cream tart instead.

So the first challenge was finding a tart pan. I spend four hours on Sunday looking for one. Of course, I got way-laid by other items but you get my gist, hard to find. I guess it’s the whole post Christmas empty shelves thing as even Williams Sonoma didn’t have one.  So I went with the pie plate.

I was a bit nervous about the pastry cream as that was also a first. Now I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of pastry creams. When I travel the world I frequent many a bakery and more often than not I choose an item with pastry cream. This was the best pastry cream I think I have had. So deliciously yummy! I want more just thinking about it, cream buns, mille feuille or even a boston cream!

I poached the pears and I think that they were just lovely. They looked pretty and smelled yummy. But unfortunately, I made them yesterday and today when the pie was eaten they were a little slimy and didn’t seem much different than canned pears. Again, lesson learned, poach the day of. But, man they looked fine yesterday.

So this is the final product, a little off track and not so lovely looking, but again, no where to go but up. (And I am so hoping that no one stops by our new little project to take a look as this is so not my best work!) (oh and sorry Claire this could have been better!)