Small Town Summer: Personal Peach Tarts

I spent most of yesterday thinking about the delicious Red Beet Risotto I was going to make for dinner. Alas, we had no beets. So now, Thursday night is the night for risotto. Hopefully.


Dinner became linguini with Italian Turkey Sausage and Spinach Tomato Sauce. Nothing of too much note, but very good none the less.


So I decided to turn to my other passion: baking. I always like baking and did it well, but I didn’t come to appreciate until I was a junior in high school and began baking desserts, cupcakes, muffins, etc. for 20 of my closest classmates almost every week. That got a little tiresome, and expensive, but still I enjoyed it.


College kept me from baking: no oven = no baking. But when I would come back home I would usually bake something to stay in the groove.


But, I haven’t made a dessert or baked since we began moving my mother from one house to another. So this was the night. And I actually had the ingredients this time.


So I decided to take the advice of Bakeaholic Mama and try her recipe for Individual Fruit Tarts. But instead of the delicious Strawberry and Rhubarb variety she made, I used peaches.

I LOVE PEACHES! They are delicious, versatile, and well, delicious. I think my true appreciation for the fruit was realized when I began working at a local farm stand. My first real job at 16 was as a cashier at an orchard/farm stand. This place grows and sells their own apples, peaches, nectarines, blueberries, raspberries, etc. including local produce and honey. It was one of the best teaching experiences I have ever had. And even today, between my 40+ hour unpaid internship, blogging, eating, living, etc., I still take shifts there when I can get them.

The worst part is being around all this fresh produce. First it makes you want to spend your entire paycheck immediately, and second, it makes you a produce snob.


So last Saturday when I came home from a long day at the orchard, I brought along 20 or so Red Haven peaches. And now that they are perfectly ripe, I will eat them single handedly.

Personal Peach Tarts makes 6 tarts
(Recipe courtesy of Bakeaholic Mama + 3 and Food & Wine Magazine)

I followed Bakeaholic Mama’s recipe pretty carefully, except I cheated.

Instead of making my own dough and refrigerating it over night, I used store bought ready-made piecrust. Please don’t judge. Blame the “college” in me.

The truth is I love this stuff. Pillsbury Ready Made piecrust in my opinion is a good alternative to the “oh so delicious yet oh so time consuming” homemade pie crust.

So if you would like to make your own dough, please visit her site.


Ingredients:


3 Pillsbury ready made piecrusts (let out for 30 minutes)


1 egg beaten for brushing tarts


Coarse or white sugar for outside tarts


For the Peach Filling:

5 Cups sliced fresh peaches (peeled of skin)

1 cup white sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

¼ cup corn starch

Juice of half a lemon

½ tsp cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Peel and Slice 10-15 peaches to make 5 cups.

Mix all Peach filling ingredients together in a large bowl.

Roll out the piecrusts and cut each in half. Cut the corners of half and re-attach to form a circle. These do not have to be perfect circles, or pretty.)  This should make 6 circles.

Do these steps one tart at a time:

Evenly place the crusts one at a time on a lined cookie sheet. (Parchment paper is best, but I used tin foil because I couldn’t find mine)



Photo Courtesy of Bakeaholic Mama + 3

Fill each individual piecrust with about 1/2 cup of peach filling leaving a border of half the piecrust.

(Make sure you account for the extra liquid created by the peaches. Strain the liquid from each spoonful of filling before filling the piecrust.) It should look more like the picture above, mine was too soupy.

Fold the piecrust up, pinching the sides carefully. (Very carefully, this caused problems for me.)

Brush the sides of the tarts with a beaten egg (egg wash)

I didn’t have a pastry brush so used a folded paper towel, it worked just fine.

Sprinkle the coarse or white sugar over the piecrust.

Put the cookie sheet with prepared tarts in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until the tarts are golden brown.

Take the tarts out and remove from cookie sheet with a large plastic spatula.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or cream, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Makes great leftovers too!
Like my breakfast this morning.

Review:


Bakeaholic Mama's looked a lot more professional and I was afraid of the extra liquid turning my tarts into soup. Luckliy the tarts browned nicely and the liquid that oozed out turned into caramelized syrup that I put on top my tarts and ice cream. Win win! Overall these were delicious and I will definitely make them again. My only suggestion is that six of these will go unbelievably fast, so if you want to share, MAKE MORE!


Because if you don't you probably will want to eat them all, like me.


Enjoy!


Love,


The College Cuisiner


Thanks to Bakeaholic Mama + 3 for her amazing recipe and photo.