Passion Fruit Tart

My husband and I celebrated our thirteenth anniversary last week. Each year I try to outdo myself baking a sweet surprise for Hubby. For lucky number thirteen, I decided to make something using passion fruit since it’s his favorite. This Passion Fruit Tart is what I came up with.

Hubby loved it so much that I thought I would share the recipe with you. Also included is my tried-and-true Lemon Tart recipe as it was my starting point for creating the passion fruit version.

Passion Fruit Tart
Printable Recipe

4 large eggs
3 ¾ ounces sugar
6 ounces passion fruit puree
6 ounces heavy cream
1 partially baked 9-inch Pâte Sucrée Tart Crust
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Whisk together the eggs and 3 ½ ounces of the sugar in a medium bowl. Whisk in the passion fruit puree and then whisk in 2 ounces of the cream. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and skim off any foam from the surface. Slowly pour into the tart crust. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes, or until just set. Let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours, or until firm.

Combine the remaining 4 ounces of cream, remaining ¼ ounce of sugar, and vanilla and whip to firm peaks. Transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip and pipe onto the tart in a decorative manner. Cut the tart into portions and serve immediately.

Makes 1 9-inch tart, serving 8. You will need about 12 fresh passion fruits for this recipe. When buying passion fruits, look for fruit that's shrinkled—that's my word for shrunken and wrinkled—and trust me when I say there's no better way to describe a ripe passion fruit. To make passion fruit puree, halve the passion fruits, scoop out the flesh using a spoon, and strain it through a fine mesh sieve. You can also use frozen passion fruit puree. If you can get your hands on it, use Tahitian vanilla, which has a uniquely floral character. Tahitian vanilla pairs beautifully with passion fruit.

Lemon Tart: Increase the sugar in the custard from 3 ½ to 4 ounces. Mix this quantity of sugar with the grated zest of 1 large or 2 small lemons until very fragrant before blending it with the eggs. Use freshly squeezed lemon juice instead of passion fruit puree.

Two Dinner Parties, One Dessert

Two dinner parties in one weekend and I was responsible for bringing dessert to both. We were treated to endlessly flowing wine and grilled leg of lamb with homemade pita bread one night and a Canadian Thanksgiving feast, complete with a twenty-something-pound roast turkey (which I was volunteered to carve), the next. My, what wonderful, generous friends we have!

Needless to say, dessert had to impress. A recent trip to the orchard to stock up on apples and pears—'tis the season here in the Pacific Northwest—meant I didn't have to look far for inspiration.


My Chocolate-Pear Tarts would be good enough for both parties.


This is a dessert born of leftovers—years ago, after finding myself with extra chocolate tart filling and a few too many poached pears after a multi-day baking spree, I decided to combine the two together in one dessert. Whether it was serendipity or just utilization, the results were divine, and this tart has been in my repertoire ever since.

Chocolate-Pear Tart
Printable Recipe

3 ounces heavy cream
3 ounces milk
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped or scant 2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 ounce egg
3 Pears Poached in Port, at room temperature
1 partially baked 9-inch Pâte Sucrée Tart Crust

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Combine the cream and milk in a small, heavy saucepan and bring to a bare simmer. Place the chocolate into a medium bowl, add the hot cream mixture, and whisk until smooth. Let cool slightly. Gradually whisk the chocolate mixture into the egg.

Pat the pears dry with paper towels. Halve and core the pears and slice them thinly, keeping the slices together so each pear half stays intact. Using a spatula, transfer the sliced pear halves to the tart crust, arranging them in a radial pattern with their stem ends at the center of the crust. Press down gently on each pear half to fan out the slices slightly. Using a pitcher or batter bowl with a spout, slowly pour in the chocolate mixture, being careful not to pour it directly over the pears. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until just set. Let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours, or until firm. Cut the tart into portions and serve immediately.

Makes 1 9-inch tart, serving 8. This tart is perfect in the fall, when Bosc pears are in season. The pears may be poached up to a day in advance and stored submerged in their cooled unreduced poaching liquid. To measure 1 ounce of egg, crack 1 egg into a bowl, lightly beat it with a fork, and weigh it out using a scale. You can tell that the tart is done when the chocolate filling jiggles like gelatin. Serve with the reduced poaching liquid sauce from the Pears Poached in Port and lightly sweetened whipped cream, if desired.

Flakey Tart Crust

Pâte brisée is French for “short dough”. It’s rich and flakey and used for sweet and savory tart, pie, and quiche crusts.

Pâte Brisée Tart Crust
Printable Recipe

12 ounces pastry flour
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
6 ounces (1 ½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, diced
4 ounces eggs
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cold water
All-purpose flour, for dusting

Combine the pastry four, salt, and butter in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low for about 5 minutes, or until the mixture resembles cornmeal.


Blend together the eggs and water in a small bowl, add to the flour mixture, and mix on low until the dough just comes together.


Transfer the dough to a work surface, bring together into a ball, and cut in half. Form each half into a ball and then flatten into a disc. Wrap each disc separately in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 2 hours or freeze for up to 1 month. (Thaw frozen dough overnight in the refrigerator and let soften slightly at room temperature before rolling out.)

On a lightly floured surface, roll out a disc of dough to a 12-inch wide, 1/8-inch thick circle. Roll the dough up on the rolling pin. Transfer it to a 9-inch pie tin. Ease the dough into the edges of the tin. Using a paring knife, trim the excess dough along the top edge of the tin. Patch any cracks or tears in the crust with a bit of the scrap dough and reserve the remaining scraps at room temperature. Refrigerate for about 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400ºF.

Line the crust with parchment paper and fill half way with pie weights.

For a partially baked crust, bake for about 20 minutes, or until set and just beginning to brown around the edges.


Carefully remove the pie weights and parchment and let cool slightly before filling. Patch any cracks in the crust with a small amount of the scrap dough.

For a fully baked crust, bake for about 20 minutes, or until set and just beginning to brown around the edges. Carefully remove the pie weights and parchment and bake for another 22 to 24 minutes, or until golden brown.


Let cool completely before filling.

Yields 2 9-inch crusts. Of course, you can use this dough to make any other size or shape crust, too. Work quickly and with a light touch to prevent the butter in the pastry from melting. Beans or rice can be used as pie weights.

Now, what to fill it with?

Strawberry Curd

How do 2 people eat an entire flat of strawberries in just 4 days? To the exclusion of nearly everything else. Except for maybe whipped cream. It takes lots of creativity and determination and dessert twice a day. But we did it.

We had plain strawberries, sugared strawberries, strawberries and cream, strawberry ice cream, strawberry verrines, and Strawberry Curd, which we ate by the spoonful, over pink strawberry cupcakes, and in strawberry tartelettes. Four days of strawberry bliss.


For the strawberry cupcakes, I used this cupcake recipe, omitting the vanilla bean, decreasing the vanilla extract to ¼ teaspoon, and substituting 12 ounces strawberries, pureed, for the milk.


I used this tart crust dough for the tartelettes.


Strawberry Curd
Printable Recipe

14 ounces strawberries
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Puree the strawberries in a food mill using a fine disc. Bring the puree to a bare simmer in a small, heavy saucepan. Whisk together the eggs, yolks, and sugar in a large bowl. Continue whisking while adding the hot puree in a thin stream. Place the bowl with the egg mixture over a medium pan of simmering water and heat, whisking constantly, for 4 to 5 minutes, or until thick. Stir in the butter and lemon juice. Chill.

Makes about 2 cups. Keeps for a day or two tightly sealed in the refrigerator.

Apples

For some reason, I didn’t like cooked fruit when I was little. I liked it fine raw, just not cooked. I especially hated cooked apples. Not a single bite of cooked apple would pass these lips. I thought apple pie wasn’t worth eating, baked apples were yucky, apple sauce was gross, and stewed apples would just about make me cry. But my first bite of tarte tatin changed all of that.


Tarte Tatin
Printable Recipe

8 large Golden Delicious apples, peeled, halved, and cored
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter
1/3 cup water
1 8 to 9-ounce sheet puff pastry dough

Toss together the apples and lemon juice in a large bowl. Combine the sugar, butter, and water in a tarte tatin pan or a 10-inch, heavy sauté pan. Bring to a boil, brush down the sides of the pan with water, and boil for 10 to 12 minutes, or until caramelized. The sugar will be fragrant and a deep amber color when it is caramelized. Immediately add the apples cut side up, arranging them in neat overlapping circles.


Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the apples are tender.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425ºF. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the puff pastry to an 11-inch square and cut out an 11-inch circle. Transfer the circle to a plate, reserving the scraps for another use, and refrigerate.

Remove the pan from the heat and let cool for about 5 minutes. Top the apples with the pastry circle, tucking it in around the edges, and cut a 1-inch X in the center. Transfer the pan to the oven and bake for 22 to 24 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Let cool for about 5 minutes and, using pot holders, carefully invert onto a serving platter. Let cool slightly, cut into portions, and serve.

Makes 1 10-inch tart, serving 8. Spectacular in the fall, when apples are at their best. And, of course, caramel is good in any season. Frozen puff pastry works perfectly, just thaw it in the refrigerator, not at room temperature. Golden Delicious apples are my favorite for this recipe, they keep their shape once cooked, and they taste silky and buttery. Be very careful when adding the apples to the caramel in the pan—caramel is extremely hot, and it will bubble up on contact with the apples. I like to cook the apples on the stovetop for quite a bit longer than usual, so that the all of the juices the apples exude have enough time to cook down. This method ensures that the crust does not become soggy once the tart is inverted.

Berry Picking

We drove out so Sauvie Island for the second weekend in a row, crossing our fingers for ripe and ready-to-pick strawberries.


The berries weren’t quite ripe last weekend. In a good year, the bushes are so heavy with fruit, you don’t know where to start picking. The strawberries practically jump into your mouth, they’re so irresistible, and you just can’t stop eating. Their fragrance is intoxicating. The strawberries are warm from the sun and sweet like sugar and so juicy. The juices stain your lips. Last year was one of the best in recent memory.

U-pick strawberries are about a dollar a pound. My husband likes to say they should weigh us before and after we go into the field, because for every berry that goes into the bucket, we eat two or three. But they haven’t caught on yet.

I can hardly wait for strawberry season every year. We usually make it home with about twenty pounds of fresh berries. This year I planned on making strawberry ice cream and popsicles, strawberry shortcakes, chocolate-dipped strawberries, strawberry charlottes, lavender-strawberry verrines, strawberry lemonade, frozen strawberry soufflés, strawberry panna cottas, and a strawberry tart, to name a few.

But this wasn’t such a good year for strawberries. And by the time we got to the field, they had been picked over. The strawberries didn’t taste like sugar. They were resistible, I didn’t feel an uncontrollable desire to eat every last one of them. We only picked a couple of pounds.


Just enough to make strawberry mousse cakelettes.


It turns out that a bad season for strawberries can be a good season for raspberries. And lucky for us, the farm we go to has both. We came upon the raspberries quite by accident, as we wandered around wondering what to do about our meager strawberry harvest. These were the best, most aromatic raspberries I’ve ever tasted. So we picked lots.


Behold, my strawberry tart turned into a raspberry tart.


Raspberry Tart
Printable Recipe

1 ¾ teaspoons gelatin
1 cup heavy cream
1 large egg yolk
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces mascarpone, softened
1 fully baked 9-inch Pâte Sucrée Tart Crust
1 ¼ pound raspberries
2 tablespoons Chambord
3 tablespoons seedless raspberry jam

Measure 1 tablespoon of water into a small bowl and slowly sprinkle over ½ teaspoon of the gelatin. Heat ½ cup of the heavy cream to a simmer in a small saucepan. Whisk together the yolk and 2 tablespoons of the sugar in a small bowl. Continue whisking while adding the hot cream in a thin stream. Transfer the mixture back to the saucepan and cook, stirring constantly, over low heat for about 5 minutes, or until it reaches 160˚F and thickens. Stir the gelatin and vanilla into the cream mixture and strain through a fine mesh sieve. Let cool to room temperature. Stir the cream mixture into the mascarpone, a little at a time. Chill over an ice bath until just beginning to thicken. Transfer to the tart crust and refrigerate for about an hour, or until set.

Puree 8 ounces of the raspberries in a food mill using the finest disc. If the puree has seeds, strain it through a fine mesh sieve to remove them. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar. Slowly sprinkle the remaining 1 ¼ teaspoons of gelatin over the Chambord. Place the bowl of the gelatin mixture over a small pan of simmering water and heat until melted. Stir into the raspberry mixture. Whip the remaining ½ cup of cream to stiff peaks. Stir 1/3 of the cream into the raspberry mixture, then fold in the remaining cream. Transfer to the tart crust and refrigerate for about an hour, or until set.

Arrange the remaining 12 ounces of raspberries atop the tart in a decorative pattern. Combine the jam and 2 tablespoons water in a small saucepan and heat until melted. Lightly brush the raspberries with the hot jam mixture. Cut the tart into portions and serve immediately.

Makes 1 9-inch tart, serving 8.

Sweet Tart Crust

I love to make tarts. They’re as wonderful to look at as they are to eat, and they make any occasion special. Here’s my favorite no-fail sugar dough recipe.

Pâte Sucrée Tart Crust
Printable Recipe

5 1/3 ounces powdered sugar
11 ounces (2 ¾ sticks) cold unsalted butter, diced
1 pound all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 large egg

Combine all of the ingredients in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low for about 3 minutes, or until the dough just comes together.


Transfer the dough to a work surface, bring together into a ball, and cut into thirds. Form each portion into a ball and then flatten into a disc. Wrap each disc separately in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about half an hour or freeze for up to 1 month. (Thaw frozen dough overnight in the refrigerator and let soften slightly at room temperature before rolling out.)

On a lightly floured surface, roll out a disc of dough to a 13-inch wide, 1/8-inch thick circle.


Roll the dough up on the rolling pin.


Transfer it to a 9-inch loose-bottom tart tin.


Ease the dough into the edges of the tin.


Roll the pin across the top edge of the tin to trim the excess dough.


Patch any cracks or tears in the crust with a bit of the scrap dough and reserve the remaining scraps at room temperature. Prick the bottom of the crust all over with a fork. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

For a partially baked crust, bake for about 20 minutes, or until set and just beginning to brown around the edges.


Let cool slightly before filling. Patch any cracks in the crust with a small amount of the scrap dough.

For a fully baked crust, bake for about half an hour, or until golden brown.


Let cool completely before filling.

Yields 3 9-inch tart crusts. Of course, you can use this dough to make any other size or shape tart, too. Work quickly and with a light touch to prevent the butter in the pastry from melting.

Now, what to fill it with?