Tuesday's with Dorie-French Pear Tart- Dorie Greenspan's Personal Pick!!

I can't tell you how excited I was when I saw that Dorie Greenspan herself, had chosen a tart recipe to kick off 2009 for Tuesday's with Dorie. I received 8 mini-tart pans for Christmas and was happy to put them to use so soon.

The first decision- which tart base to make? I couldn't chose just one, so I made Pistachio Sweet Tart Dough and a batch of plain Sweet Tart Dough. Something about pistachios and pears......

Dorie Greenspan chose French Pear Tart for this week's Tuesday's with Dorie recipe. You can find the recipe on Dorie's blog. Tuesday's with Dorie is turning 1 this month. It was started a year ago and to celebrate, Dorie chose the recipe to start off the new year. I can't tell you how amazingly delicious this tart was. Just one bite, was like a taste of heaven.

Dorie said you could use canned pears, fresh pears rubbed with lemon juice, or you could poach fresh pears in a simple syrup. I poached my fresh, just-ripe Bartlett pears and was on my way. The almond cream was interesting to make. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, since it was just butter, sugar, ground almonds, an egg and a few other things. But it worked wonders for this tart. Yum.....

Dorie also said you could glaze the finished tarts with apple jelly or give them a dust of confectioner's sugar. I had a helper with the dusting.

I had enough pears and almond cream to fill 6 mini-tarts (I think they were 4-inch pans). It was tought to get a whole pear half to fit in one tart shell, so I filled a few with too much pear and they over flowed. I decided to put a little less pear in the last few and we just ate the leftover pear pieces. Since I had 2 tart shells left to fill and a bunch of super-tiny-little-mini tart shells (which I made in my mini-muffin tin, since I had so much tart dough), I needed some other kind of filling. There were a bunch of egg yolks leftover from our Gingerbread House and Royal Icing-making fiasco, so I made Dorie's Lemon-Ginger Pastry Cream. I just steeped rounds of ginger and large pieces of lemon zest in the milk (I made it with skim milk) and piped the remaining shells full of it. I sprinkled the leftover ground pistachios and almonds over the pastry cream and we were in heaven, again. The favorite here was the Tart dough made with Pistachios-what a wonderful way to start off 2009! Go check out the Tuesday's with Dorie blogroll to see who else loved this recipe!

Coming Tomorrow- Roasted Vegetable Gratin