Summer Fruit Tartlets

Summer is one of my favorite season of the year for many reasons. As a teacher, I have my summer off, and have the leisure to do what I want. The weather is perfect to go to the beach and do fun outdoors activities as long as it is early in the day;-). And for a healthy freak like me, summer offers you a wonderful array of vegetables and fruits to dine on: Squash, zucchini, cuccumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, peaches, strawberry, berries…. you name it.. you have it..

Well, since I am always on the go, I am not one who can own a garden as it requires much care, time and attention. Therefore I have to go to my grocery store, or my neighboring farmer’s market to buy my vegetables and fruits. The problem with that, is the fact there are so many tempting choices in those places. So I often end up buying more than I can cook or serve at once. And of course this was the case this week with fruits. Everywhere I turned, they were yummy fruits: blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, mango, kiwis, peaches. Since I just could not make a decision on what to purchase, I just bought one of everything. So now, I have to find ways to cook or prepare those fruits so that everybody here will eat them. The solution to the problem: add whipped cream or chocolate and it will disappear.

So today my daughter and I fixed summer fruit tartlets. They are so easy to make, and so delicious…You can make mini tartlets or individuals tartlets. Of course the pies would take 100 times better if it was made out of Pate Sablee, but we were trying to be quick.

Ingredients: 1 cup of heavy cream, 2 tsbp of vanilla extract, 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, 1 pie crust, fresh fruits of your choice ( I used kiwis, strawberry and blueberries).

Materials: Flexipan of tartlet tray ( medium, small or large depending on how you want to serve them. We chose the small tartlet trays so we could snack on those tartlets rather having them as desserts). You will also need the Demarle dough cutter that would best fit the size of the tartlets you are fixing ( 2 1/4 for the small tartlet, 3 1/16 for the medium, 3 7/8 for the large), Demarle whip, spatula, Demarle paring knife, the roulpat, a whipping bag, and a nice tip for the pastry bag.

Turn the oven to 325. Lay out the pie crust on the roulpat and cut out the dough for each of the tartlets. I used the scalloped edge. With a fork, puncture small holes in the dough. Cook in the oven for 10-12 minutes until they become golden. Remove from the oven, and let them cool. Meanwhile in a electric mixer, place 1 cup of heavy cream with 1/4 cup of sugar and 2 tbsp of sugar and whip until it becomes thick and makes peaks. Place the whipped cream in the pastry bag, and pipe the cream in each tartlet ( they should be cold at this point or the cream will melt.) With the paring knife, slice the fruits thinly to make them fit nicely on your tart. Decorate the tartlets as you like. We used kiwis, strawberries and blueberries. Miam….