INTUITIVE EATING: ONE PERFECT, GENERIC DESSERT!
Elegant Simple Puff Pastry Tart Using Almost Any Fruit
This is it! The one perfect, generic dessert for every party or every day occasion.
Just keep frozen Puff Pastry sheets in your freezer. Also, buy some Parchment Paper (in the Baking section of grocery store) and keep it handy.
Need a fancy dessert, or just want to enjoy fresh fruit in season or out? Take out one sheet. Defrost it on very low a few minutes, making sure not to “melt” it. Flour a wooden or pastry board lightly and roll the sheet out into a rectangle the size of a cookie baking sheet.
Preheat the oven as instructed on Puff Pastry package.
Choose a fruit. Peaches, pears, apples, plums, raspberries, blueberries, bananas, apricots, nectarines, dried apricots, or your imagination! Or mix fruits with each other.Slice the larger fruits thin as you want (1/4 inch?).
Mix the fruit with a little something for slight flavoring. I like liquors: Ameretto (great with peaches, pears, apples) Raspberry Chambord, whatever!, just a few tablespoons to moisten and let sit a few minutes.
Or use traditional spices: cinnamon (apples?), nutmeg (pears), clove, pie spice, whatever you like!
You can sprinkle in a little Splenda or Splenda-for-baking (half Splenda, half sugar) or a little sugar if you want more sweetening. But the idea is to let the flavor of the fruit on the pastry shine through. Very European! Very gourmet! Very easy!!!!!!
Put Parchment Paper on the cookie tray (prevents sticking of tart), rectangle of dough on the paper, and arrange fruit on the dough, leaving a small (1/4-1/2 inch?) margin to pinch up as a rim to keep juices in.
ONLY MAIN RULE: DON’T PUT TOO MUCH FRUIT JUICE OR OTHER JUICE ON OR YOUR PASTRY CRUST WILL GET SOGGY! Still delicious but not quite as “gourmet.”
Put in the oven and bake as directed. The pastry will puff up, especially around the edges.
If you want, when you roll out the puff pastry sheet initially, you can cut it into rectangles or circles, then make smaller tarts by spreading fruit on each. But, me, I just cut the big tart into rectangles after it cooks and cools for a few minutes, and nobody at my house complains.
See other recipes and the philosophy of Intuitive Eating and Intuitive Cooking under Categories: Intuitive Eating or Food in the sidebar.
Basic to Intuitive Cooking and Eating is checking with your “body sense,” your “intuition” of what you want to eat, what would taste great “thrown together.” You can learn the Intuitive Focusing skill and find many Free Articles about Focusing and its partner skill, Focused Listening, at our website for Creative Edge Focusing (TM)
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Dr. Kathy McGuire
Creative Edge Focusing (TM
Themocracy
Ah, I forgot to say add a dollop of lite whipped cream (from aerosol can) or non-dairy topping (like Kool Whip) as a finishing touch on each piece of tart before eating! Kathy
Kathy, thanks for your recipees! They stimulate to just be tried.
Another Puff Pastry recipe:
we needed a quick dinner after a day’s labor work and I used what was there:
I got a french cheese, camembert, cut in 4, then in half, put puff pastry around 1/4 of the cheese and bake it in the oven for half an hour or so.
Eat it when still hot.
Beautiful with honey and some nuts on a green salad, but as we didn’t have that also with baked small potatoes and veg. Yummie.
Barbara
Yes, I love puff pastry and soft cheeses, baked. And, I bought one already with a “baked” shell at Aldi (an international chain discount supermarket which I love) with Brie cheese and cranberry/walnut/honey layer on top, between cheese and crust. Well, I can cut a hunk and microwave it for 20-30 seconds, and the cheese melts, the cranberry/honey/walnut oozes — delicious!
So, now, I also sometimes take a hunk of plain Brie and microwave it a tiny bit until it starts melting, and add anything: grapes, cranberry sauce and nuts, marmalade or other jam/preserves, canned pie filling (No Sugar with Splenda as sweetener — apple, blueberry, cherry, peach. Yummmm! Thanks, Barbara! Kathy