Saturday, August 20, 2011

Summer Dessert

Fresh fruit mini tarts. First time I've ever made these and they were wonderful for a hot day. No turning on the oven for me! And it seemed like something simple and pretty to take to our neighbor's bbq.

I found these tart shells at Coop - they were on sale for 1/2 off. Great! The original recipe called for raspberries, but since there are so many wonderful fresh fruits (on sale!) out now, I decided to use three. I kept them one fruit per tart, but you could easily do two. Three might be pushing it as they are a bit on the small side.

What you need:
1 package of 12 Tartelettes (or you can make your own)
75 ml of apple juice (apfelsaft)
195g of Mascarpone (available at Coop or Migros in different sizes)
3/4 of a vanilla bean, scraped (Vanilleschote, ausgekratzt)
3 Tbls sugar (zucker)
Peppermint leaves (pfefferminze)
Fresh fruit - I used strawberries (erdbeeren), blackberries (brombeeren) and raspberries (himbeeren)
150ml of cream (vollrahm - Coop/Migros)

Mix the juice, sugar, marscapone and scraped vanilla bean into a bowl.

Put the cream in a bowl and mix it until it is thick and starts to form soft peaks.  Slowly add the previous mixture in and whip until the peaks are formed (just fyi - I didn't quite get the peaks, I got tired of mixing, and it didn't get as firm as I think it should have, however putting it in the fridge for an hour after making it made it 'stick' together and all was good) :)

I also sliced my fruit up as it seemed too big for the tart 'shells' Also, take the peppermint leaves off the stem and wash them as well as the fruit.

I placed some fruit in the bottom of the shell and then poured some of the cream mixture on top. I then placed two pieces of the same fruit on top and topped with a mint leaf.

The vanilla seemed to stay more towards the bottom of the bowl, so be careful to mix thoroughly to get it back into the mixture.  Enjoy.