papaFasu celebrated another year on Tuesday and being the good daughter that I am, I baked his celebratory dessert. Of course he didn't suggest a thing when I asked him what kind of dessert he wanted. And of course mamaFasu knew just what would please his palette, a fruit tart.

Recipe: Franken-tart, see Notes below

Notes: I originally selected the Classic Fresh Fruit Tart with Pastry Cream from Cooks Illustrated. I ran into a bit of a snafu when I started the tart pastry. I was apparently out of powdered sugar and didn't realize it until after I finished the pastry cream and was measuring out ingredients for the pastry. Big fat whoops. This would have been my first attempt at pate sucree so I guess I'll have to wait for another day. After digging through some other books, I finally found something that would work with what I had on hand, the cream cheese tart dough from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook.

I need to remember to read directions carefully as I always manage to forget to flour my parchment sheets when I roll out the dough. Peeling sticky dough off parchment is not fun. I also need to remember to buy another pack of pie weights because one pack is certainly not enough. I had major shell shrinkage.

The pastry cream turned out great! After I had made it, I thought it tasted egg-ie. But after chilling in the fridge, it tasted absolutely fine. I had fun arranging the fruit on top. I basically started outward and worked my way in. I started with a ring of sliced strawberries and dotted blueberries in between. Then I followed with a ring of blackberries and then placed a ring of raspberries just outside of the blackberries on top of the strawberries. Then I just piled the rest of the blueberries in the middle. My glazing technique could use a little work (see the globs of glaze in the middle?). A note on glazing, if you're fruit isn't in contact with the pastry cream, be prepared to start chasing fruit down. I kept knocking over those raspberries with my pastry brush and having to put them back (no worries, though.. they all stayed on the tart).

Remind me not to make a fresh fruit tart over winter, especially if its berries! I felt really bad for buying berries off season. But all they had at the farmers market were apples, oranges and grapefruits. But for papaFasu, I went to the fancy grocery store and spent a good chunk of change on berries. It is his birthday after all. Now that's love.

Oh and lastly, I found this gem at the PCC flea market in LA, but it did not come home with me. Martha, consider this payback for the chocolate buttercream incident. More PCC flea market finds coming soon.