A trip to a local market this week yielded a huge basket of sweet, ripe blueberries. They were so good that I couldn’t pass them up, but I also knew that I would need to come up with at least one blueberry-heavy recipe to use them up before they went past their prime, or just bite the bullet and freeze some. A pie seemed like an ideal way to use up lots of berries, though a double crust wouldn’t show off how gorgeous they were. I opted instead to make an open blueberry tart, letting both the flavor and color of the berries shine.

There are many different types of berry tarts out there. Some encase the berries in a batter of some kind, while others use berries as a jewel-like topping for a creamy filling. I wanted to have a filling where berries were the focal point, not just an afterthought or accessory. In amongst my bookmarks, I have a recipe for small blueberry meringue tarts from Anna Olsen and I decided to use it as a jumping off point for my tart. The filling for the tarts particularly interested me, as it used both fresh and cooked blueberries.

The filling worked out beautifully. The fact that some of the berries were cooked in a sugar/cornstarch syrup gave the filling an excellent color and just enough sweetness, while the fresh berries (stirred in at the end), added texture and a bit of a “pop” when you bit into one. If you look closely at the sliced tart, you can just see the green centers of some of the fresh berries. The filling firmed up well enough to slice after being refrigerate, but was still soft and very juicy. You can try this filling with frozen and thawed berries and it will probably come out ok; fresh berries are far and away the best way to go here.

The crust was shortbread-like, and a good balance for the filling. I really liked the fact that it was sturdy, but tender - excellent qualities in a base for a soft filling. I brushed the whole crust with melted white chocolate to “seal” it once it was cool, so the filling never had a chance to make the crust soggy, even after a couple of days in the fridge (so this tart can be made a day or two ahead of time). I used a rectangular tart pan, but this crust will work for a 9 or 10-inch round tart, as well.

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Banana pudding is a classic, homestyle Southern dessert made with layers of vanilla wafer cookies (Nilla Wafers), sliced bananas and pudding or custard. Sometimes the dish is also topped with meringue or whipped cream to finish it off, as well. The dessert has actually been around for quite a while, as cooks around the turn of the 20th century looked for ways to use the then-exotic bananas in desserts and other dishes. Creamy bananas worked well with creamy custards. The Nilla Wafers were added somewhere along the line, probably to contribute a bit of extra texture to the dessert, and the recipe was made even more popular once it was printed as a standard recipe idea on boxes of the cookies.

Not having grown up in the South, I never ate banana pudding as a kid. I like all the flavors, but it doesn’t have any of that nostalgic value for me. With a box of delicious Trader Joe’s Ultimate Vanilla Wafers in my cupboard, I decided to try putting a little spin on the traditional dish to capture those flavors in a new way.

I decided on a tart. I used the vanilla wafers to make a cookie crumb crust and topped it with a layer of perfectly ripe sliced bananas. Using the classic pudding recipe from the “back of the box” version of the dessert, I cooked up a vanilla pudding to top off the tart with. The resulting dessert was fantastic. The vanilla crust had a great flavor and was very crisp, holding up well under the soft toppings and providing the dessert with a great textural contrast. The pudding was quite good and very easy to make, too.

Don’t use “overripe” bananas for this recipe. You want to choose the type that you might just ordinarily peel and eat, or they’ll be too soft to work with. You also must refrigerate this tart before slicing so it will hold together well enough to slice cleanly. Top each piece with a bit of whipped cream before serving and tuck an extra banana slice on top during plating to make it look extra special.

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There is something very appealing about a miniature tart. It’s so much fancier looking than an ordinary cookie and seems to promise more in the flavor department, while at the same time its small size lets you indulge yourself in a bite or two without guilt. From a preparation standpoint, miniature tarts aren’t much more difficult to make than full-sized tarts are and they are certainly easier to transport and serve.

These Swedish Toscas are miniature almond tarts and the original recipe was a finalist in the 1953 Pillsbury Grand National baking competition. The recipe is supposedly a family tradition, that the winner (a Mrs. Martinson from Michigan) and her relatives brought with them when they moved from Sweden to the US. I decided to adapt the bake-off recipe a bit, making the tarts smaller than called for and using a smoother almond filling in place of a chunky one to make the tarts more visually appealing.

The resulting tarts were great and very easy to make. One of my favorite things about this recipe is that the filling goes into the tart shells while they are still hot, so there is no wasted time sitting around and waiting for the crusts to cool. I used mini muffin pans to make each tart about the size of two bites. The crust is a tender and crunchy shortbread dough that is pressed into the muffin cups by hand, rather than rolled out like a more traditional tart crust might be. The filling is briefly cooked to thicken it before being spooned into the still-hot tart shells and the pastries are finished baking. In the oven, the almond filling bubbles and becomes almost candy-like, without being too sweet.

The almond flavor is surprisingly subtle, so I like to add a bit of almond extract to the shortbread crust dough to boost the flavor. It’s optional, so feel free to omit it or to use vanilla extract, if you prefer. The original recipe calls for using the same amount of slivered almonds as I used here with almond meal. Using the full nuts gives a bit more texture to the tarts, but I prefer the look without. Either way, they’ll still be tasty.

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Tis the season for meyer lemons, one of my favorite citrus fruits to use in the kitchen. The lemons are actually a hybrid fruit, a combination of mandarins and traditional lemons. They have been cultivated for years, though they have dramatically risen in the public awareness over the past couple of years. The popularity is due to a unique property of these lemons: they have none of the bitterness that most lemons do. This means that a Meyer lemon will seem sweeter and will be able to produce a bright, clean lemon flavor without having to rely on sugar and spices to mask a too-tart/bitter flavor.

Meyer lemons make a great lemon curd, imparting their bright flavor to smooth curd perfectly. Lemon curd makes a lovely no-bake tart filling. See where I’m going with this?

I used a Meyer lemon curd to fill up a prebaked sugar cookie tart crust for a quick and tasty dessert that can easily be made well in advance of any dinner or party that you might wish to serve it at. The curd is silky smooth and very lemony. When refrigerated overnight, the curd actually sets up very nicely inside the tart, so it will slice cleanly and hold its shape when chilled, though the soft silkiness remains. It pairs well with the cookie crust, which does not quite stay crisp, but stays perfectly firm and supportive of the curd.

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A butter tart is a Canadian specialty that, unless you have friends or family living up North, you may never have experienced. I’ve certainly never seen them sold in any bakery around here. The pastries are made with a tart shell that is filled with a mixture of sugar and butter, held together with eggs. Often, the tart filling includes raisins or chopped nuts, but a plain tart is pretty standard - and pretty darn tasty, too.

The closest way I can think of to describe the overall texture of the tart is to say that it is a little bit like a pecan pie without the pecans. But that really only emcompasses a small part (the sweetness) of the tart. The filling is gooey and buttery, almost slick with a melt-in-your-mouth texture and just the right amount of caramely sweetness from the sugar. It is held together with a hint of flaky crispness from the pastry crust. The tarts are light, but rich, and it seems prudent to make them small so that you can enjoy a few bites at a time. I baked mine in a standard muffin pan, which worked out perfectly and didn’t require me to pull out a set of miniature tart pans.

This recipe turns out a very tasty butter tart. Many recipes call for the filling to be made with corn syrup (sometimes lots of corn syrup), but mine starts with brown sugar. I added a little bit of maple syrup for an extra hint of flavor, and made sure to include a pinch of salt to take the edge off the sweetness of the filling. Since I made two dozen, I made half with raisins and half without. The amount of raisins given below is approximate; just sprinkle a few raisins into each tart shell to suit your tastes. Since the raisins take up some of the filling space in the shells, you might get two or three fewer tarts if you omit them entirely, so keep that in mind. I used my pate brisee recipe to make the crust. One recipe makes enough dough for two dozen small tarts.

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I admit that my first instinct when thinking of Halloween recipes is to go for things that involve pumpkin, like pumpkin pie and pumpkin donuts. But chocolate is such an important part of the holiday (we all know it’s true) that a chocolate dessert seems to be just as good a fit, assuming that you can take more chocolate after all those snack-sized candy bars.

This tart, I think, is perfect for Halloween. Topped with a giant spiderweb - which will probably match any spooky decorations you put up at home - how could it not be?

It starts with a pre-baked bate brisee tart crust and is filled with a dark chocolate ganache. The spiderweb design is made by piping concentric circles of melted white chocolate onto the surface of the dark ganache and pulling a toothpick through the rings to make the connective webbing. The trick to getting the a clean spiderweb is to try and make sure that the white chocolate and the ganache are at the same consistency and temperature when you go to finish the design; the filling needs to be very warm, as does the white chocolate. I used an orange plastic spider to finish off the spiderweb look of my tart, but feel free use a chocolate or candy spider, if you can find one. Leave off the decorative spider entirely if you want to serve it at other times during the year.

The tart can set at room temperature, but will harden much faster in the refrigerator. Once finished, it is basically a divinely dark chocolate truffle with a pastry shell attached - and will be pure heaven for anyone who loves chocolate truffles. It is very rich and should be served in small, thin slices. Whether you choose to serve it near room temperature or straight from the fridge is entirely up to you. I like it both ways, and have served this tart to people with a clear preference for one way over the other, so just do what works for you. And, as is the case with most chocolate desserts, it works extremely well when served with hot coffee.

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