TWD: La Palette's Strawberry Tart

This week, for Tuesdays with Dorie, Marie of A Year from Oak Cottage selected Dorie’s La Palette’s Strawberry Tart. Yay! An easy, refreshing recipe that incorporates a summer fruit!

When I was growing up… we grew strawberries (well, at least for 3-4 years). It was great to have fresh strawberries, but man.. picking them sucked. Luckily, I was young enough, where I wasn’t expected to hunch over in the garden and pick the strawberries. All I was expected to do was sit around and not get into trouble (too much). Ahhhh… to be a young child again with low expectations for your actions.

I guess my maternal grandma grew strawberries too (though, I don’t remember) because, she almost always had strawberries that had been sliced and sugared till they formed this delicious strawberry syrup and she’d freeze it all in a little Tupperware container. She’d take one out and thaw it to go on hot biscuits for breakfast. Yum.

Strawberries are one of my favorite fruits and with them being so good for you, I was so excited to try this simple dessert.

So, this recipe is supposed to be made in a tart crust. You make the crust and bake it completely, then spread some strawberry jam on it and cover that with fresh cut up strawberries! Easy!

I decided to half the tart dough recipe though and I rolled it out and cut out little cookie sized dough rounds and baked those off. So, I essentially had very hard shortbread cookies.
The only thing I had to buy was strawberry jam…I went to my neighborhood Harris Teeter and perused the jam aisle. I was getting ready to just pick up a jar of Smuckers Strawberry Jam when I saw this near the top of the shelf…
Trappist Rhubarb Strawberry Preserves.

Even though it was like 5 bucks for a little jar, I had to have it. And folks, I could easily take a spoon and eat this entire jar without batting an eyelash. This stuff is like crack.. The monks are surely getting by with their chastity vows because of these preserves. SERIOUSLY.
Overall, I really liked this dessert. It was light and refreshing and you could easily keep some frozen dough rounds in your freezer and pop them in the oven whenever you have some particularly yummy strawberries. The tart dough is VERY crunchy though. And for whatever reason, I’m kind of a soggy food girl. I know, it’s weird. I like plain untoasted bread for my hamburgers and sandwiches and I like nachos after they’ve had the queso sitting on them for awhile and the chips are all soft and soggy. Weird, right? I made up a couple of theses and put them in the fridge, hoping that they would sog (is sog a word? According to spell check, it is not) up some. But it didn’t. Still, very delicious.