This past weekend, Joanna and I were up in Erie at her parents' place for her father and sister's birthdays. Joanna has a tradition of making a special dessert for the birthdays of all her friends and family. This year, her father requested a strawberry tart which, while Joanna is a pro at these, I've never made. Let me say, this thing was so delicious that Hellen Keller would scream "Hot Damn!" with one bite. Just sayin...
This was made in her parents' kitchen, which has that awesome country kitchen feel to it. As we didn't have our usual tools like stand mixers, we had to improvise a bit. Still, we are nothing if not stubborn and set to the task with single minded determinedness.
The first step to any recipe is of course prep work. In this case that meant cutting strawberries. Lots and lots of strawberries.
Scads of them. At this point, I could have stopped, grabbed a fork, and been a happy camper.
While I cut strawberries, Joanna was creaming butter and powdered sugar for the crust. It's almost a shortbread type crust that we were going for...
Devoid of either of our beloved Kitchen-aid mixers and knowing this was too big a job for a hand mixer, it became incumbent upon her to just get in there with her hands and go for broke.
Here we see Joanna pressing the crust into her tart pan. I love her tart pan. She's totally got me beat on awesome baking supplies. She did however get me some super cool Wilton pans as a housewarming gift. It has nothing to do with this recipe but I felt like bragging.
Believe it or not, this is actually the finished, baked crust. For some reason, her parent's oven doesn't brown anything. It's still fully cooked though and was flaky and delicious.
Here I am mixing up the filling, combining the white chocolate and cream cheese. This would have sucked with just a whisk. What did people do before electricity? This hand mixer is probably older than I am and it keeps chugging away. They don't make stuff now like they used to.
The lovely Joanna spreading the filling in the crust. She may kill me for showing a picture of her. I dunno.
That's some major deliciousness we got going on here...
Now to begin layering the strawberries on. This reminded me of making the Pepperoni Extreme Pizza when I worked at Rascal House Pizza in college...
As you can see, being the OCD perfectionist I am, I only used the most aesthetically pleasing slices. The rest died while Joanna and I watched Food Network and waited for the glaze to set.
What glaze, you say? Why, this one. A simple sugar glaze with some lemon juice in it. If I may be a snob, let me suggest you always use fresh lemon juice. Citric acid in a lemon shaped bottle does NOT equal lemon juice. We had to improvise here with the spatula as a pastry brush was not to be found.
It is finished. So lovely and delicious. So rich and wonderful. So bursting with flavor. Next time we make one of these, I'm not sharing. It will just be me, a fork, and a soon to be empty tart pan. As a result, let me also add "sinful" to the list of adjectives to describe this delight, as it could drive a fella to gluttony.
L'chaim!
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