Rustic Raspberry Lemon Cheesecake Tart

Valentine's Day is only a few days away and everywhere you look you are being inundated with chocolate desserts. Don't get me wrong, I like chocolate as much as the next person, but over the years my taste buds are definitely changing. These days I find myself gravitating towards fruit based desserts more often than not. There is just something about the combination of sweet and slightly sour or tart that seems to go oh so well together.

As far as desserts go, today's recipe comes together quickly and ranks high in the fruit satisfaction department. Store bought puff pastry sheets, a creamy no-bake cheesecake filling laced with a luscious lemon curd and topped with glorious sweet, red raspberries. Perfection! I made my own lemon curd following my recipe for Meyer Lemon Curd, but store bought is a perfectly fine substitution and will help to streamline the process.

The combination of flaky crust, creamy filling, and fresh fruit makes this dessert irresistible in my book. This is the perfect alternative for all of you non-chocolate lovers (like my husband) and I don't think that the chocolate connoisseurs would even mind a slice of this beautiful tart. 

Rustic Raspberry Lemon Cheesecake Tart
~makes 1 tart~
(Print this Recipe)

Ingredients:
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed but still cold
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
2 Tbsp. heavy cream
1/3 cup lemon curd, homemade or store-bought
1 pint raspberries
1/4 cup seedless raspberry jam, warmed
Powdered sugar

Directions:
For the tart: Preheat oven to 425° F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat baking mat. Unfold the thawed out puff pastry on a lightly flour dusted area and gently roll into a 10x11 inch rectangle. Carefully transfer to your baking sheet.

Brush edges with a little bit of water and fold over all 4 sides to create a lip. Using a fork, poke holes all over the center of your tart. Gently brush the entire tart with an egg wash and sprinkle about 2 tsp. of sugar over the center. Bake until golden brown, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and carefully with the back of a spoon press the center back down if it has puffed. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

For the filling: In a bowl combine softened cream cheese and sugar. Mix with a hand-mixer or by hand until smooth and the sugar is well incorporated. Add the heavy cream and mix for about 1 minute. Fold in the lemon curd. 

To assemble the tart: Carefully spread your lemon cheesecake mixture over the center of your cooled tart crust. Arrange berries decoratively over the curd and drizzle with the warmed jam. Dust the tart with powdered sugar.

Notes: This tart is best made and eaten on the same day. You can prepare the tart along with the cheesecake filling ahead of time. Refrigerate the filling and assemble the tart right before eating.

Other berries would be lovely as well. I bet blueberries, strawberries, blackberries or a combination would also be great!

A Susi's Kochen und Backen Original Recipe

 

The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart

For this weeks BWD: Baking with Dorie Challenge, it was Elizabeth's first pick and she decided on The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart on Page 331 and 332 in Dorie Greenspan's book

Baking: From my home to yours.

Since I've proclaimed my love for anything citrus a few times already on this blog, I was certainly excited about making it again, yes again. When I first ordered this book and it arrived over a year ago this was one of the first recipes I made. At that time I made a few notes about the tart and stuck it next to the recipe for future use.

This tart is certainly not for the faint of heart. Between the tart crust and the lemon filling, the recipe calls for a whopping 30 tablespoons of butter!!! So most definitely not a diet food, but like everything in life, if you make it only once or twice a year and have a small piece it will fit into any lifestyle.

The Lemon Cream Tart is what lemon dreams are made out of. It has crunch from the crust, tartness from the lemon and is beyond creamy from all that butter.

I started making this tart by baking the crust. Dorie suggest either her regular sweet tart dough or any variation of it. I decided to add pistachios to mine since it sounded good in combination with the lemon. In true fashion, this tart wasn't going to be my friend either. For some reason it browned quicker than my last few and almost burned. But since at this point the crust was still intact I wasn't going to bake it again. I should have known better since as soon as I placed my filling into this wonderful light and crumbly tart shell two pieces broke of the sides.

Secondly, I started working on my lemon curd. It starts by rubbing sugar with lemon zest until moist and fragrant. Into this you whisk eggs and the lemon juice. The mixture is then put over a double boiler. No matter how hard I tried the first time I made this, or even the second time, I could not get the curd to read 180 degrees F on my instant read thermometer as Dorie's recipe recommends. 160 degrees was as high as it would go and since my curd was thick and leaving tracks (another sign), I called it a day yet again and took it off the stove. Her next step is to strain the curd through a strainer and into your blender bowl, discarding the remaining lemon zest. This was another step I skipped. I love the way lemon zest adds little specks of color in a food plus my curd was nice and smooth so I figured no straining required to dirty another dish.

After letting the lemon mixture cool for a bit, you start blending in the pieces of butter. The first time I made it I used all the butter called for in the recipe, and while the flavor was OK, the family agreed the butter was too overwhelming. So this time I kept tasting after every 5 pieces and stopped at 2 sticks (16 tablespoons) of butter. Much better flavor, and the lemon was still the star in this dish.

I mentioned my crust started breaking as soon as the filling went in. I knew I had to do something to save this tart, at least for a picture opportunity. Looking through my fridge I found some cream cheese and thought that some cream cheese frosting should do the trick. So a quick frosting was whipped up and piped along the sides to contain the "leaks" and then I decided to add a quick little piping around the edges which helped disguise some of the darker edges of the crust.

I really liked this tart since it was mighty tasty and I will probably make it again sometime if I have guests, but for casual get togethers or family occasions, I will probably stick with simple lemon bars or lemon meringue pie since I really can't justify eating this much butter all the time.

Check out Elizabeth's blog and Grapefruit's blog for the recipe and to see what they thought about this Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart.

For our next BWD in two weeks (the 10th of May) it is Elizabeth's pick again with Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte on Page 240-242. So if any of this has peeked your interest and you want to join the fun with us next time, just shoot me or Grapefruit an email and we'd be more than happy to have you.

Toasted Coconut Custard Tart

This is the story of the  Tart that was almost not meant to be. It certainly cost me a few more gray hairs, that's for sure. I wanted to make this Coconut Custard Tart for our 18th wedding anniversary since my husband loves desserts with coconut (hence the Perfect Party Cake he chose for his birthday). I picked this dessert out of Dorie Greenspan's book; Baking: From My Home to Yours since none of her recipes have disappointed me so far. Plus, when I saw sweet tart crust filled with a smooth coconut studded pastry cream and topped with a rum infused whipped cream I was pretty much in love.

The day started out well and I was cruising along with my sweet tart dough. It's practically flour, powdered sugar, butter and one egg yolk, pulsed in a food processor until it all comes together. The dough is then pressed into a tart pan with a removable bottom, which is then put in the freezer for a bit before baking. Once my dough went into the freezer I started on the custard. It is pretty much a standard custard with milk, egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch with the only exception being a pinch of coriander. The mix gets cooked until thick, then you add butter, dark rum and vanilla. Toasted coconut gets folded in and the custard gets chilled until ready for filling.

This is when my perfect baking process started to go awry. I put the pastry lined tart pan in the oven and set my timer for 25 minutes. I guess I had forgotten to press start after I had set my timer and didn't realize my mistake until I smelled something burning. Yes, you guessed it, the sweet tart dough was a loss.

Since I was determined to make my husband this dessert I set out to re-make my tart crust. Everything came together perfect, just like the first time. This time though I didn't mess up my timer and the crust was baked to perfection. I took it out and set it on a rack to cool. After about half an hour when I returned to un-mold the crust, the sides came out off the tart pan great but when I tried to slide it off the removable bottom tray the whole crust crumbled apart on me. There was no saving this one. At this point I was ready to just call it a day and admit defeat when my middle child told me that I could get it done and "3rd times a charm".

So for the third time in one day I made the sweet tart dough. From now on I can most certainly bake this tart dough in my sleep. Finally I had reached success. Everything came together at last. The crust was beautiful, the filling delicious and the topping of whipped cream along with a little more rum, vanilla and powdered sugar plus more toasted coconut turned this into anything but your grandma's coconut cream pie. Success after all and at least my husband is certainly worth the effort after 18 years. Happy Anniversary Honey!!!