You may recall that my first run at a peach tart this year was but a qualified success; the early season peaches I was working with at the time were small—barely enough to fill the bottom of the shell. It was still pretty good, but too custardy: not nearly peachy enough.

This time I had the opposite problem, which wasn’t really a problem at all until I decided to split the recipe into three.  The following are my notes on the adventure:

I use Paula Deen’s Recipe found HERE on Food Network’s site. Trust me; this is a brilliant recipe—both easy and delicious. Anyone living in or near the state of Georgia, home of the most glorious peaches on earth (and pecans!), should arm themselves with at the very least a peach cobbler (and pecan pie!) recipe. Like the Knave of Hearts, I am more of a tart man. In fact, I’ve started something of a tradition with a few of my neighbors whereby they supply me with peaches and pecans at the appointed times of year and I bake ‘em up for us!

So, this time I split the recipe. Indeed, if you have three little 6 inch tart (-let) pans (measured at the wide open fluted end, not the bottom) you can get this 10 inch tart recipe into all three with no adjustments to the ingredients whatsoever. Where I went wrong a little this time was in overfilling the shells. If you look closely to the picture you can see that some of the custard bubbled over and got between the crust and the pan, resulting in at least two of them getting a little stuck when it came time to drop the ring. Just an aesthetic thing… They were still super “scrummy” as Mary Berry would say.

Here’s why this happened: This recipe calls for an un-greased pan, and you truly don’t have to grease it, even lightly. In fact, when you blank it off first it will come in a bit off the edge. Now, since I had loads of wonderful peaches this time I put as many slices in as I could get which left less room for the custard. The custard pours well when mixed and will fill in all the little cracks and crevices but don’t overfill the shell! I could have just left a little custard in the bowl but, being a hog, I put it all in. That’s what bubbled over a bit and in so doing found the space between shell and pan (essentially gluing it there in a couple of places). This could have been remedied by putting fewer peaches in (boo!) as well, I guess, but what I really should have done was use less custard.

There is no criticism of the recipe itself. I would give it 5/5 stars. I do have a suggestion, however, courtesy of my wife. She said it needed a little something extra, and indeed it does need one thing: a splash of one teaspoon of real vanilla extract. It makes all the difference. This goes into the custard when you mix it up for the entire recipe whether you plan on dividing it into three like I did or not.

By the way, if you have any peaches left over, be sure to grill them up! Ree Drummond has a good recipe for this HERE on her blog.

It’s not complicated, really. Just throw some butter on a hot grill pan, brush some maple syrup on the peach halves (I prefer to skin ‘em first so they can be grilled on both sides) and watch ‘em go with some tongs. We serve these on boneless pork chops prepared simply as follows:

¾ to 1 inch chops marinated for an hour or more in a soy sauce based marinade.

Get a low skillet-like an omelet pan (stainless steel or similar; you could even use cast iron,  just do NOT use a non-stick coated pan for this) and pre-heat it on medium high, dry as a bone.

Pat dry the chops and add black pepper, a touch more salt (remember there was a lot of salt in the marinade), and copious sprinkle of Herbs de Provence. Then spray the chops on that side with cooking spray (Pam or similar oil) and put the chops in the pan sprayed side down for exactly 2 minutes. During this time you prep the other side of the chops and flip when the 2 minutes are up for two more on the other side.

Then, put the pan and chops with pats of butter placed on top of each into a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven for approximately 5 minutes to finish off (more or less depending on thickness of your chop). Take out and off pan and let rest at least 5 minutes under foil before thin slicing on a bias and covering with grilled peaches. Serve with a spring salad with balsamic vinaigrette. If you don’t load up with a starchy side here you’ll have more room later when it comes time for scarfing peach tart.

Super easy. Super good. Slapping your momma entirely optional.

(Day 11) If you’ve followed me for a while, you know you may occasionally encounter a baked good, especially a tart. Well, for today’s post I decided to offer up a picture of our afternoon’s work, and why my post is coming a bit late.

Let me start by saying that I’m not happy with it. Actually, the custard and shell look fine; my issue is with the peaches. They were tragically undersized, and a few of them were so dodgy that I ran a bit thin. This explains why it looks like a jam and custard tart. There are sliced peaches under there, I promise! I’ve made this before, and when there are plentiful large peaches, they poke through the custard and show a nice pinwheel. In today’s case they got buried.

Anyway, we’re going to give it a test bite this evening with an eye to sharing it if it tastes any good. Either way, however, I owe you a picture of what a proper one is supposed to look like at some point.

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This past weekend, we celebrated my wife’s impending birthday by making the treat she has been dreaming of ever since we saw Martha making it on the TV. Who says you can’t have a tart for a “birthday cake”? Oh, and it’s good too!

The reason she wanted to go this route has as much to do with her love of Reese’s Cups as it does with my tart making prowess. I can now say that I have mastered four different kinds of delicious tarts: this one, my holiday favorite (caramel pecan), our summer favorite (peach custard), and the simple one that started it all so many years ago, a simple jam.

The recipe for this one can be found on Martha’s website. I would give both the finished product and the recipe itself 5/5 stars for taste and accuracy.

Here are our notes, if you’ve any interest in making one for yourself:

Martha doesn’t say in the recipe (and I can’t remember if she does in the show), but I used a non-stick 10″ tart pan and, just to be sure, very, very lightly greased it with cooking spray. To do this you spray a little on and then gently wipe most of it off with a paper towel to leave the slightest sheen. This is just added insurance to prevent breakage when you pull away the ring at the end.

15 minutes in our oven was plenty, and we could smell the shell by then, but I wouldn’t have described it as “fragrant” in a pervasive sense: we could smell it as it came out, but don’t rely on smell to know your shell is done baking.

The peanut butter filling surprised us. From the recipe we expected it to be a little more oozy. Don’t be surprised if it takes a little bit of work to get it out to the sides. We encountered no problems here, but I wouldn’t describe this step as she does with the word “pour”. the consistency we got was similar to peanut butter cookie dough.

Martha’s described method of a gentle non-double boiler way to make the ganache is super easy and fun. The emulsion part was really neat as the glossy chocolate topping comes together before your eyes.

As you can see from the picture, we didn’t bother with the decorative swirls. The color of our ganache isn’t because we used a different kind of chocolate either (compare ours to the significantly darker one depicted on her website). We used 60% bittersweet nibs from Ghiradelli–not sure why our chocolate turned out so much lighter than hers…

We had a slice at the very moment it was ready and it was delicious. The next day, after an overnight in the fridge, it was still in great shape. It doesn’t need it but, if you care to go to the trouble, I would recommend serving it with a dollop of freshly whipped cream. The peanut brittle Martha suggests in accompaniment would also be great, but know that the cookie crust provides plenty of crunchy texture all on its own.

I enjoy baking, so you may occasionally encounter a recipe or review here.