End of Summer Tart

Kate-

It is the end of the summer here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The trees are starting to turn, school is starting back up, and the late summer/early fall fruit is starting to show up in the farmer’s markets.  The first week of classes at Michigan Technological University always ends with K-Day, or Keweenaw Day, a half day of classes that then lets the students go and learn about student organizations and enjoy what is hopefully a beautiful fall day in the Keweenaw (pronounced KEY-win-aw).  My husband’s department always has a departmental picnic on K-Day, and I almost always make a dessert of some kind.  This year, I really wanted to use some seasonal fruit, and so I made a frangipane-based summer fruit tart.  I called Sarah and asked if she wanted to help out, since she’s awesome in the kitchen, and of course she said yes.

I found a recipe that, if I’m quite honest, freaked me out a bit.  For those of you who have made tarts, or really any shell-type pastry, one of the tried and true rules of thumb is that you MUST USE COLD BUTTER!!  Well, this recipe threw that right out the door.  Forget cold butter, this was not even room temperature butter…this was butter melted/baked in a 410 degree oven!

SARAH- What the hey, right? If the crust looked weird we could always make a different one and carry on with the tart. So into the oven went the butter, vegetable oil, sugar, and salt. Though an unusual way to make a pastry shell, I was confident things would work one way or another. First, Kate is a great baker. Second, people have been combining these type of ingredients for as long as they have been available to be combined. There had to be more than one way to bring them together and I was curious as to what the results would be.

So what is the difference between a pie and a tart? Both contain a crust and filling of some kind. What we now recognize as a pie was first documented in the early 1300’s in Europe. It was a great way to reuse leftovers or store them for a longer period of time.  The tart came along a couple hundred years later and like the pie had a crust and could be either savory or sweet, however; the major difference here is that the tart was left open faced. Why you may ask? The answer is simple. Medieval bakers and cooks in noble kitchens wanted to display the contents of the dish in an eye pleasing manner. Tarts are edible art. Their purpose was to impress the noble lords and ladies, visiting dignitaries, and members of royal courts all gathered at feasts. Of course the tart was a perfect choice for the K-Day department picnic! We were out to impress the professors and researchers of Michigan Tech. By the way, if you want to know more pie and tart history, click here.

Now back to the butter concoction that was starting to melt and bubble…

Kate-

So, the recipe was pretty much having me make a browned butter tart shell…just done in the oven rather than on the stove top.  I mixed the flour in quickly, with lots of bubbling and fizzing, and then while it is still warm I had to press it into the tart pan.

I was so stoked to get this into the oven!  I had been planning this whole thing to maximize time useage, and while it was in the oven, we were going to do a quick clean up and clean and chop fruit for the filling.  Then while the shell cooled, we’d make the frangipane and make the fruit pretty.  Yay!

So, fellow bakers, do you see anything…wrong or missing in the above photo?  Yeah, I totally didn’t notice until Sarah looked in the window and said “Um, Kate, it’s REALLY bubbling up in the middle.”  EEEEK!!!  I’d completely forgotten the pie weights.  Well, I grabbed them, opened the oven, put them in with my fingers crossed that this wasn’t going to screw anything up, and finished the bake.

The sudden addition of pie weights did not seem to affect the bake at all, thankfully.  Anyway, after that bit of excitement, Sarah took on the cleaning and slicing of the fruit.  I am here to tell you, she’s got some serious skills with peeling peaches.  She got them peeled in almost one continuous spiral!  I am so jealous!  The peaches smelled divine, and the raspberries were bright and red and really tempting to eat right then and there.  We also made the frangipane, and with everything ready to go, it was time to assemble the tart!!

I started to do a fancy peach arrangement in the frangipane, only to discover that the peach slices were too big for the design I had in mind.  Cue me, picking out peach slices and smoothing out frangipane and rearranging everything so that there was room for the raspberries.  In the end, I really didn’t waste many of the slices (only 3 total!), and there were plenty left over for Sarah’s son to eat (which he did enthusiastically).

Sarah- Peaches are one of my favorite fruits. It was a challenge to resist popping a slice or two into my mouth when Kate wasn’t looking. I won’t say I didn’t snitch a raspberry or two, but we knew we would have more than enough.

Kate- You can see in the photo above that the frangipane ended up looking a little rough, but I was hoping it would all bake out just fine.  I was excited to get this sucker in the oven, to see how it baked up.  Yay fruit tart!!

 

Oh it came out beautifully.  I was a little unsure on the bake of the frangipane, and ended up putting it back in the oven for a few more minutes, but when it was done, it was lovely.  I was more than a little bummed that we wouldn’t be able to sample it right away.  The good news is that I had absolutely nothing to bring home after the picnic.  It was gone almost before I got a piece!  I would definitely make it again, although I think I’d like to try a different variety of fruits, just to see how they work out.  Yum!!