A Tempting Tart

T here’s a wonderful scene in one of the later Little House books, in which Laura is making her own wedding cake. To do so, she must beat the egg whites with a fork until they are stiff, which to my mind is a feat of strength and endurance not often found today. I’ve been returning to these hands-on methods in my own baking recently (but not with egg whites, mind you — my whisking arm only holds out long enough to make whipped cream), and I find a certain satisfaction in working together a meatloaf mix or — on rare occasions — a hollandaise sauce.

It’s pastry dough that truly has my hand and heart, however, and though you can make it much more quickly in a food processor, I prefer the slower method. (Also, I own a very small and wildly noisy food processor, and since much of my baking is done at night, it’s often useless.) Last summer, I set myself a goal of becoming proficient at pastry dough, and since then I’ve made a small but successful range of pies and tarts. The most delicious? The peach pie I made for my cousin’s birthday. The most unique? A carrot, onion, and goat-cheese tart.

I’ve never taken anything resembling a pastry class (which is probably why my cream puffs keep failing), but after watching my mom and America’s Test Kitchen for long enough, I got an idea of what I should be looking for. Pie crust, like the one I use in my key lime pie, is bound to get controversial. Opinions run strong on whether to use all butter, all lard, or a combo of both. Sugar or not? Ice water or vodka? I recently made an empanada pastry dough that called for masa harina and tequila, so there are all manner of variations on this theme.

I generally opt for an all-butter dough with ice water to combine everything (I would use vodka, but my stash is currently full of vanilla beans and slowly transforming into extract), but I’m usually rushing to get it in the fridge to firm up so I can use it the same day. With this week’s recipe though, I had uncharacteristically prepped the dough the night before. My last few baking columns have been scant on decent pictures of the final creation, so this week, I planned to make a fruit tart and time it so I could use natural light. So at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, I started rubbing cold butter into the flour and salt mixture by hand — until I remembered my pastry cutter. A gift from some of my students last year, this is a fabulous kitchen tool you can use in all manner of situations. I, for once, was using it in the proper capacity.

This essay was originally going to be about the trials and triumphs of baking an angel-food cake. It’s difficult, however, to make an angel-food cake when you are out of both eggs and sugar with no time to run to the store. Then, I remembered the plums.

Back in August, I made a similar tart for my sister and brother-in-law. With plums as the base fruit, and blueberries and raspberries tossed in, it was so delicious that it nearly distracted us from our rollicking game of Mystery of the Abbey (a sort of complicated, Catholic version of Clue). This time, though, I had four overripe plums and a scattering of sketchy-looking strawberries, so in the interest of time and prudence, I tabled the angel-food cake for another day.

It’s amazing how quickly this tart comes together when you’ve pre-made the dough and simply need to roll it out. Chop up the fruit and toss with sugar (I found a few tablespoons left in the pantry), arrange the mixture in the middle of the flattened, chilled dough, and pleat the edges. Brush your pastry with water and sprinkle with more sugar (turbinado this time, of which I have plenty), and tuck it into a ripping-hot oven. The first tart I’d made had leaked raspberry juice, which burned onto part of the pastry. In a vain attempt to avoid this outcome on take two, I kept checking the tart and using a paper towel to soak up the strawberry juices that threatened to ruin my crisp crust.

It almost worked.

A little later, after some time cooling on a wire rack, the tart started off down the road with me. We all have a place in this world, and right now, mine was in a basement schoolroom teaching writing. The tart’s? Gracing my friends’ table, tempting small hands and eager eyes with its promise of a last sweet taste of summer.