Tartlettes

David and I went to a lunch with his colleagues last weekend, and I was signed up to bring a dessert. I decided to play with my new flexible tartlette pan and make tartlettes aux fraises (strawberry) and citron (lemon). I took the recipes from a variety of places: the crust recipe came from my French cooking mentor Odile, the crème recipe from my Classic French Cooking book, a gift from my former boss Christophe and his wife, and the tart citron recipe I found on the NY Times website. At the risk of looking like a foodie blogger, I took photos of the process:

Spanish strawberries: twice the size and half the price of the French version

Little crusties

Oliver and I monitor the progress in the oven

Crème Patisserie - the first time I have cooked with a vanilla bean

Tartlette shell army

Crème Patisserie ready to go

Tarlette shells with crème - the crème shouldn't be this lumpy, but the taste was still good.

Tartlettes aux fraises - the fat strawberries did a good job of hiding the lumpy crème

Tartlettes citron - pretty coming straight out of the oven. Unfortunately, after a few hours, every single one was severly cracked. I tried another batch mid-week with different cooling methods and got the same results. I'm vexed!

This weekend I had some extra apples lying around and made tartlettes aux pommes (apple). I cheated this time and used a store crust, but did make the almond crème for the apples to nestle into. I really have no idea how to make a proper French tart aux pommes (probably involves something exotic like apple brandy), so I did it with an American twist: brown sugar, vanilla, and cinammon. No pictures of this one, but maybe I'll manage to take one before they're gone.