TWD #46: Pear with me. This one’s a doozy!

Can you believe it?

My fabulous baking group, Tuesdays with Dorie turned 1 year old on January 1, 2009 and I’ve been baking for 46 weeks of it! What a milestone huh? Excuse me while I toot my own horn. *toot toot*

I have learned so much from all the Dorie bakers since I joined this amazing group. Thank you to everyone for their comments, twitters and sharing their creative adaptions/substitutions with me. I am a better baker now b/c of you all. Truly. No fooling. Here’s looking at many more years… ::champagne glass clink::

To celebrate TWD’s blogiversary, the esteemed author herself, THE Dorie Greenspan, chose this week’s recipe. You can find the recipe on her blog. Also don’t forget to see what the other Dorie bakers thought of the pear tart too!

Let me just start out by saying that this one was a comedy of errors for me. ::smacks head::

• I made my sweet tart dough the day before, pressed it into mini tart pans and put them in the freezer overnight. Everything aok so far…
• I went back and forth on using canned vs fresh pears and decided that I wanted to impress Dorie so I went out and bought the fresh. Don’t ask me why I thought fresh was more impressive. My brain is just crazy sometimes…
• Still wanting to impress Dorie, I did the optional pear poaching for 15 minutes per recipe instructions.
• While the pears were poaching on the stove, I combined the sugar and butter in food processor for the almond cream and then realized, as I was staring at my Costco size bag of unblanched almonds, that I needed BLANCHED ground almonds. FYI – How to blanch almonds. Some of those suckers peeled so easily while others forced me to drown them in boiling water again. Blanching almonds is not fun. Luckily my husband was nice enough to help me. (Those are his fingers in the picture.)
• Instead of 2 tsp of rum I started putting in 2 TBSP but noticed my error after the first tbsp and tried to soak up some of the rum with a napkin so who knows how much rum really went into my tart.
• I was expecting the almond cream to be more cake batter but mine was more like thinned out cookie dough. *shrugs
• I put the almond cream in the mini tart pans and smoothed them out with a offset spatula before I realized that I never pre-baked the crusts. DOH!
• I contemplated scooping out all the almond cream to pre-bake crusts but then laziness got the best of me and I said “Screw it!” and started cutting up the poached pears.
• Poaching the pears made them too mushy. Maybe my pears were too ripe? I have a mushy texture thing so I kinda gagged while assembling the tart. Next time I make this I probably won’t poach or maybe I’ll go for canned.
• After I put the pears on the tart I thought about taking them off but again the laziness thing came rearing its ugly head so I left them on, popped the tarts in the oven and hope for the best.

What I learned this week:
Sometimes things don’t go as you plan but you just have to roll with the punches, don’t give up and hope for a baking miracle. Who knows. You might just realize that you don’t need to pre-bake the crusts and a little more rum never hurt anyone. LOL

French Pear Tart
Recipe from Baking: From My Home To Yours, Dorie Greenspan

Makes 1-9inch tart (I made 4-4 inch tarts)

After you poach the pears, slice them lengthwise from top to bottom and remove the pit. I use a small melon baller. Makes it very easy!

I baked my mini tarts for about 30 minutes.

ENJOY!

Husband rating: A+
He couldn’t get enough of the pear tart and is struggling with what is his favorite – the cheesecake or this tart. Right now he’s still saying that the cheesecake has a slight edge but not by much. haha

Wifey rating: A+
Even though I had some “issues” with the tart and major pear sinkage this was SO freaking delicious! I will definitely make it again. Maybe next time I’ll switch out the pears for raspberries! YUM!

Other rating: A+
T and I split 1 mini tart and he brought the rest to work. His CWs raved many times. According to T they want to buy me a “thank you” gift now. You know something’s good when ppl want to spend their hard earned money to buy you a gift to say thank you. haha

Next week: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins page 6