The Strawberries are Coming: Again, Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart

I picked the first handful of garden strawberries this morning, marking the beginning of my 2014 berry season out in my yard. I am planning to make this pie again as soon as full production begins, hopefully within a week, if the sun comes out and it stays dry for a few days. My pal Brad may just get a homemade strawberry tart for his birthday dinner. Please enjoy this post from about a year ago. It's one of the best strawberry tarts you'll eat.

A day or so ago, I was ogling a beautiful peach tart over on Food52. Even Pinned it to make soon. Peaches, so far are not great, and a peach tart will have to wait a few weeks until the height of the season. What I do have is a small glut of homegrown strawberries, small sweet Mara des Bois. And Chuck has been asking for a strawberry pie since I brought in the first bowlful from the garden. Amanda Hesser wrote the recipe on Food52, and she got me when she said the recipe had been her mother's. I am a total sucker for family recipes. I started to read the comments, too and found that many other cooks, since the recipe is a couple of years old, used fruit other than peaches with great success.

I'd told Chuck there would be no strawberry pie since I'd used my last frozen homemade pie shell, and I refuse to use store-bought. He uses them all the time, but I won't. Any fool can make a decent filling; I rest my laurels on my butter and lard pie crust. So, with some trepidation I decided to try this press-in crust from Amanda's recipe that uses oil. Handed-down recipes are almost always good, and this is no exception. I made a few minor recipe changes, besides using strawberries, but it's still pretty much Amanda's mom's recipe, I think. Easy to toss together, for sure. So this version is for you, Amanda, and please thank your mom from all of us.

The best tip ever is in the video with the original recipe over on Food52: pat the crust into the pan from the rim toward the center. With a big tart like this, sometimes it feels like you won't have enough dough to make a nice rim if you start from the center out. This method totally eliminates the problem.

This strawberry tart is wonderful. The berries get an almost jammy consistency, but still have a fresh berry flavor. Please try to use good, local ripe berries for this; those huge, shipped-far, underripe berries just don't match the deliciousness of  the local ones.

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart
Too hot to cut yet, but, oh boy!

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart

Serves 8
Adapted slightly from Amanda Hesser's Peach Tart on Food52

Note: oils seeds are among the most genetically modified crops on the planet, and the only way to assure you are not using GMO oil is to use organic oils. Light flavored olive oils, are usually overly processed, too. So choose your ingredients accordingly. I use all organic products, but choosing organic oil is probably the most important.

Tools: 11"(or a 9") tart pan with removable bottom


1-1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
3/4 cups plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup organic canola, corn or vegetable oil
2T light cream or organic coconut creamer
1/2  teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter
1 quart small strawberries, hulled and halved lengthwise (about 2-1/2 lb)

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF.  In a bowl, mix together with a whisk, 1-1/2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp sea salt and 1 teaspoon sugar. In another bowl, whisk together the oil, the cream and the almond extract. Pour the oil mixture into the flour mixture and mix gently with a fork until it's all just combined and crumbly, don't over work it. Dump it into the tart pan, and working from the rim edge towards the center, pat the dough in place, about 1/8" thick.

2. Mix with your fingertips in a bowl, the 3/4 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, 1/4  teaspoon of salt and the butter until it's crumbly and sandy looking.

3. Starting out at the rim, start placing the berry halves, cut side down, in tight concentric circles on top of the dough. Fill in gaps with smaller berries or tear off pieces of strawberry. Sprinkle all of the the sugar-flour mixture evenly over the top of the fruit, and bake for 35 to 45 (mine took 35) minutes until the pastry is lightly browned and the berries look bubbly and jam-like. Cool on a rack and serve at room temp or slightly chilled, with healthy dollops of whipped creme fraiche or whipped cream.

5 Delicious Things to Do with Your Homemade Crème Fraîche

Am trying to find some time to bury my toes in the sand. So please bear with a few reposts for the next couple of weeks. There will be some new material, but ...Happy Summer.

I know, I know. I've been banging the drum about making your own crème fraîche for months now, but honestly it's worth the 10 seconds (minus the sitting-on-the-counter-time) of actual work it takes you to make the glorious stuff. If you somehow missed the super-easy instructions I've posted before, you can find them here. But once you make it, you end up with a jar full, rather than the measly,  expensive little cupful you find in the market. A few of you have asked what you can do with such a bounty.

As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much crème fraîche, just like you can never have too much chocolate. It's the sophisticated cousin of sour cream, and instead of a  sour tang, it has a nutty, full, more rounded flavor. And unlike one of it's parents, heavy cream, it keeps a long time. Mine will keep well up to a month in the coldest part of my fridge. If it lasts that long without having to start a fresh batch. I always start a fresh batch when I get down to my last half-cup or so.  Remember to keep a quarter cup or so to use as a starter with a bout 2 cups of single pasteurized heavy cream. Every day I can find a reason to dip into the jar of creamy goodness at least once.  God forbid I run out. Here's how I use mine (other than eating it right off a spoon):

Homemade crème fraîche.
For the record I did not eat the whole spoonful.

1.
As a topping for fruit, lightly sweetened or not.  I like it unsweetened, but taste it, and add a bit of sugar , honey, erythritol or stevia to your liking. Nothing is nicer than a bowl of sweet berries or peaches with a big ole spoonful of crème fraîche atop. All those ads showing strawberries with that fake-tasting frozen glop in a tub can't hold a candle to creamy crème fraîche. Or unsweetened as a topping for a baked potato, or better yet, a baked sweet potato. Nothing wrong with adding a sprinkle of blue cheese and some black pepper...

2.
Replace heavy cream with an equal amount of crème fraîche in baked goods. If your baking recipe calls for heavy cream, use your crème fraîche instead. It adds a depth of flavor you can't get from heavy cream. Cream pies, cakes, and ice creams are all seriously improved with crème fraîche.

3.
Whip it. You can whip it, and use it in either savory or sweet dishes. Mine usually whips more easily than regular cream, and if you stir a bit of curry paste into it before whipping it to dab on your crab cakes or spoon into your tomato soup, you won't be disappointed. Surprise your dining mates with savory whipped cream. They'll think you are a genius.

4.
Turn into a sauce or dressing. Just add your favorite seasonings,--- mine are currently Dijon mustard and anchovy paste, whisk in and the resulting sauce is perfect over grilled chicken, or over steamed vegetables like beets or green beans. To make into a dressing, you can do this, or simply mix with lemon juice, salt, pepper and a little minced fresh garlic. Need it lighter, use equal parts crème fraîche and plain fat-free Greek yogurt. A crème fraîche-yogurt salad dressing makes salad days seem a lot less penitential.

5.
Make cultured butter. If you have ever tasted cultured butter, you know why it costs so much over at Whole Paycheck. It's hard to go back to regular butter once you've had it or cooked with it. If you put a couple of cups of crème fraîche into a food processor or beat it with a hand mixer, just turn on the power, and keep going until it curdles up. Just takes a few minutes. Carefully, with a spatula, press out as much whey as you can, drain it off, and then add some cold water with an equal amount of ice to the curds and whirl again. Press out the water again with your spatula, and drain --keep going until it's all butter, and with the spatula, stir in a pinch or to of finely ground salt if you want salted butter. Go get some bread and eat. Don't share, it's that good.

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart

A day or so ago, I was ogling a beautiful peach tart over on Food52. Even Pinned it to make soon. Peaches, so far are not great, and a peach tart will have to wait a few weeks until the height of the season. What I do have is a small glut of homegrown strawberries, small sweet Mara des Bois. And Chuck has been asking for a strawberry pie since I brought in the first bowlful from the garden. Amanda Hesser wrote the recipe on Food52, and she got me when she said the recipe had been her mother's. I am a total sucker for family recipes. I started to read the comments, too and found that many other cooks, since the recipe is a couple of years old, used fruit other than peaches with great success.

I'd told Chuck there would be no strawberry pie since I'd used my last frozen homemade pie shell, and I refuse to use store-bought. He uses them all the time, but I won't. Any fool can make a decent filling; I rest my laurels on my butter and lard pie crust. So, with some trepidation I decided to try this press-in crust from Amanda's recipe that uses oil. Handed-down recipes are almost always good, and this is no exception. I made a few minor recipe changes, besides using strawberries, but it's still pretty much Amanda's mom's recipe, I think. Easy to toss together, for sure. So this version is for you, Amanda, and please thank your mom from all of us.

The best tip ever is in the video with the original recipe over on Food52: pat the crust into the pan from the rim toward the center. With a big tart like this, sometimes it feels like you won't have enough dough to make a nice rim if you start from the center out. This method totally eliminates the problem.

This strawberry tart is wonderful. The berries get an almost jammy consistency, but still have a fresh berry flavor. Please try to use good, local ripe berries for this; those huge, shipped-far, underripe berries just don't match the deliciousness of  the local ones.

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart
Too hot to cut yet, but, oh boy!

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart
Serves 8
Adapted slightly from Amanda Hesser's Peach Tart on Food52

Note: oils seeds are among the most genetically modified crops on the planet, and the only way to assure you are not using GMO oil is to use organic oils. Light flavored olive oils, are usually overly processed, too. So choose your ingredients accordingly. I use all organic products, but choosing organic oil is probably the most important.

Tools: 11"(or a 9") tart pan with removable bottom


1-1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
3/4 cups plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup organic canola, corn or vegetable oil
2T light cream or organic coconut creamer
1/2  teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter
1 quart small strawberries, hulled and halved lengthwise (about 2-1/2 lb)

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF.  In a bowl, mix together with a whisk, 1-1/2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp sea salt and 1 teaspoon sugar. In another bowl, whisk together the oil, the cream and the almond extract. Pour the oil mixture into the flour mixture and mix gently with a fork until it's all just combined and crumbly, don't over work it. Dump it into the tart pan, and working from the rim edge towards the center, pat the dough in place, about 1/8" thick.

2. Mix with your fingertips in a bowl, the 3/4 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, 1/4  teaspoon of salt and the butter until it's crumbly and sandy looking.

3. Starting out at the rim, start placing the berry halves, cut side down, in tight concentric circles on top of the dough. Fill in gaps with smaller berries or tear off pieces of strawberry. Sprinkle all of the the sugar-flour mixture evenly over the top of the fruit, and bake for 35 to 45 (mine took 35) minutes until the pastry is lightly browned and the berries look bubbly and jam-like. Cool on a rack and serve at room temp or slightly chilled, with healthy dollops of whipped creme fraiche or whipped cream.

5 Delicious Things to Do with Your Homemade Crème Fraîche

I know, I know. I've been banging the drum about making your own crème fraîche for months now, but honestly it's worth the 10 seconds (minus the sitting-on-the-counter-time) of actual work it takes you to make the glorious stuff. If you somehow missed the super-easy instructions I've posted before, you can find them here. But once you make it, you end up with a jar full, rather than the measly,  expensive little cupful you find in the market. A few of you have asked what you can do with such a bounty.

As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much crème fraîche, just like you can never have too much chocolate. It's the sophisticated cousin of sour cream, and instead of a  sour tang, it has a nutty, full, more rounded flavor. And unlike one of it's parents, heavy cream, it keeps a long time. Mine will keep well up to a month in the coldest part of my fridge. If it lasts that long without having to start a fresh batch. I always start a fresh batch when I get down to my last half-cup or so.  Remember to keep a quarter cup or so to use as a starter with a bout 2 cups of single pasteurized heavy cream. Every day I can find a reason to dip into the jar of creamy goodness at least once.  God forbid I run out. Here's how I use mine (other than eating it right off a spoon):

Homemade crème fraîche.
For the record I did not eat the whole spoonful.

1.
As a topping for fruit, lightly sweetened or not.  I like it unsweetened, but taste it, and add a bit of sugar , honey, erythritol or stevia to your liking. Nothing is nicer than a bowl of sweet berries or peaches with a big ole spoonful of crème fraîche atop. All those ads showing strawberries with that fake-tasting frozen glop in a tub can't hold a candle to creamy crème fraîche. Or unsweetened as a topping for a baked potato, or better yet, a baked sweet potato. Nothing wrong with adding a sprinkle of blue cheese and some black pepper...

2.
Replace heavy cream with an equal amount of crème fraîche in baked goods. If your baking recipe calls for heavy cream, use your crème fraîche instead. It adds a depth of flavor you can't get from heavy cream. Cream pies, cakes, and ice creams are all seriously improved with crème fraîche.

3.
Whip it. You can whip it, and use it in either savory or sweet dishes. Mine usually whips more easily than regular cream, and if you stir a bit of curry paste into it before whipping it to dab on your crab cakes or spoon into your tomato soup, you won't be disappointed. Surprise your dining mates with savory whipped cream. They'll think you are a genius.

4.
Turn into a sauce or dressing. Just add your favorite seasonings,--- mine are currently Dijon mustard and anchovy paste, whisk in and the resulting sauce is perfect over grilled chicken, or over steamed vegetables like beets or green beans. To make into a dressing, you can do this, or simply mix with lemon juice, salt, pepper and a little minced fresh garlic. Need it lighter, use equal parts crème fraîche and plain fat-free Greek yogurt. A crème fraîche-yogurt salad dressing makes salad days seem a lot less penitential.

5.
Make cultured butter. If you have ever tasted cultured butter, you know why it costs so much over at Whole Paycheck. It's hard to go back to regular butter once you've had it or cooked with it. If you put a couple of cups of crème fraîche into a food processor or beat it with a hand mixer, just turn on the power, and keep going until it curdles up. Just takes a few minutes. Carefully, with a spatula, press out as much whey as you can, drain it off, and then add some cold water with an equal amount of ice to the curds and whirl again. Press out the water again with your spatula, and drain --keep going until it's all butter, and with the spatula, stir in a pinch or to of finely ground salt if you want salted butter. Go get some bread and eat. Don't share, it's that good.