Welcome to my little post! Tonight, for your culinary pleasure, I bring you a wonderful little recipe for fruit tarts! Well, perhaps recipe isn’t quite the right word. To be honest, I am, shall we say, somewhat “culinarily challenged”. (Yes, there was a reason I ate so many grilled cheese sandwiches in college, but I digress.) I’ve heard it said that chemists are naturally good cooks. Hmmm…. uh, not so much in my case. While my duties as a criminalist have allowed me to make some, shall we say, “interesting compounds” in the lab, (for which I flatter myself, I do very well), I have regrettably been unable to transfer such skills to the kitchen. Okay, let’s face it, I am a lousy cook! I will admit it. However, I am good with color and design, so as long as I don’t need to bake it, broil it, fry or sauté it, I can make it into something edible! So, if you were looking for detailed instructions on making home-made pie crusts, tart filling from scratch, or growing your own fruit garden for said tarts, I will, unfortunately, be unable to help you. If you are however, looking for a quick dessert to bring to an office party, birthday party, ladies Bible study or tea, you’ve come to the right place. These fruit tarts are simple, tasty, beautiful, and people love them!
They involve the assembly of three items that can be easily purchased at your local grocery store: Tart shells, ready-made pudding, and fruit.
I’ve found two types of pre-made tart/pie shells that I like to use. The Keebler ReadyCrust minis are Graham cracker pie crusts that come six to a package and are about 3 ½ inches in diameter. The Private Selection Tartlet Shells are shortbread. Those come sixteen in a box, and each shell is about 1 ¾ inches in diameter.
For the filling, I use Snack Pack vanilla pudding, but you can use any flavor you’d like.
Lastly, I use fresh fruit like mandarin oranges, kiwi, strawberries, blue berries, raspberries, pineapple and blackberries. When fresh fruit is out of season, you can use canned fruit.
Spoon some pudding into each tart shell, using a smaller spoon for the little tartlets. Use the back side of the spoon to smooth the pudding so that it is uniform throughout the shell. Each 3 ½ oz cup of pudding will fill two graham shells, and a whole slew of tartlets! (a whole slew…that’s the technical term for many…)
Wash, drain, and slice the fruit as needed. Top each shell with fruit pieces and/or slices.
Now you have gorgeous little desserts, in record time!
Every time I’ve served them, the guests have just loved them, and as an added bonus, they thought I had spent hours making them! That will just be our little secret… enjoy!
On the journey toward Home,
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You crack me up. Actually chemist are only supposed to be good bakers-they have to follow recipes to a tee. Truly good cooks know how to wing it – a pinch of this a dash of that… And you weren’t completely honest – you make great baklava and that requires baking! Love u my sister.
lol! Okay I’ll give you the baklava…It’s the pinching and dashing I’ve got issues with!
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