I just made this one up on the fly, so I don’t think it counts. However, I want to prevent potential disasters and this cherry tart definitely qualified as a disaster.
You’d never have known it by looking at it pre-baking:
Beautiful, no? Look at those cherries! More than 3 pints, picked and pitted by yours truly. I love having our own cherry tree, especially after seeing cherries selling for $5/pint at the farmer’s market last weekend.
You’ll notice there is no post-baking photo. That is because I was too embarrassed to take one.
I started out by pressing this shortbread recipe into an 8″ x 8″ pan. Now, I’ve had trouble with this recipe overbrowning before, but did I let that stop me from using it as a base that would require an extra baking time? No, I did not…because I am a trailblazer, and trailblazers just blaze trails. They don’t think about the fact that pressing that shortbread up the sides of the pan means the shortbread is even thinner and even more prone to overbrowning; and trailblazers most certainly don’t stop to think that since the cherries had been refrigerated, the center of the tart might bake more slowly than the edges, making it likely that the edges would end up black as that proverbial kettle before the middle was cooked through. No, sir: this trailblazer was busy thinking that if I hurried and got this into the oven before 8am, I could also make the cheese crisps for lunch and whip up a loaf of that new sandwich bread I wanted to try. Then we could build a campfire and see if those lemon marshmallows I made yesterday would roast like I thought they would. (BTW, that part of the trailblazing worked perfectly. And I recommend sandwiching the marshmallow between two fresh cherries when you thread your stick.)
Let’s just say this tart was a disaster. I don’t need to give you all the gory details. But…since I am a trailblazer, I have already figured out a better route to take to satisfy my craving for cherry cheer (really, were you surprised?). And I’ll review that once I’ve got another 3 pints of cherries picked!
[...] picked another 3 pints of cherries this morning and decided to try out a revised version of a cherry tart. I wanted to end up with a crisp topping and a juicy filling instead of the soupy mess I had [...]