Over this last long weekend, I somehow got invited to three different barbecues on three separate days. I don’t know how that happened. I’m usually not that popular. I’m usually lucky to just get invited to one barbecue in a weekend.
But then came the dilemma of what to bring to these barbecues. I wanted to go with something familiar, so that I’m not trying out daringly new things during such a busy weekend. So I went with a fruit tart, since I’ve found that fruit tarts are relatively easy to make, and yet people enjoy them quite a bit, especially their visual appearance. Plus I get to be a little bit creative with the fruit arrangements.
The crust and pastry cream are the same recipes that I always use (here and here).
Tart #1 was for a Saturday barbecue.
I went with oranges, strawberries, kiwi, and blueberries.
I usually slice strawberries thinly for tarts, but I decided to just cut them in half and arrange them around the edge this time.
A ring of orange segments is inside a ring of kiwi slices.
The center is a bunch of blueberries sitting inside of a ring of strawberry slices.
Then came a Sunday barbecue, where I brought tart #2.
Same four fruits as tart #1, plus some mango.
I put some mango slices in between the strawberries in the outer ring, and also added a ring of mangoes right on top of the kiwi slices.
There’s a ring of orange segments like in the first tart, but it’s covered up by the mango ring, which I thought was kind of sloppy. It turns out that it’s hard to make a ring out of straight strips of fruit…
A lone strawberry in the middle, surrounded by blueberries.
Tart #3 was for a barbecue on July 4th proper. I basically got out all of the leftover fruit I bought for the weekend.
The first plate of fruit for this tart: oranges, kiwi, strawberries, mango.
The second plate has blueberries, white peaches, and black plums.
This time I made a mango spiral with the slices going in between the strawberries on the outside, which looked better than the sloppy mango ring of tart #2.
The peach and plum wedges are in the middle of the tart, surrounded by a ring of kiwi slices.
Once again, the orange segments are totally hidden by all the other fruit. They’re down there somewhere.
Blueberries in the middle. There’s some white peach peeking out from under the mangoes, too. Don’t ask me to draw a diagram of the architecture. I have no idea where the oranges went.
I somehow managed to make three different tarts on three different days, each with a different set of fruits. Eventually, I want to make a twenty-fruit tart, like the twenty vegetable fried rice. Not sure how I’ll do it with a 9-inch tart, given how tightly I had to pack seven types of fruit in. People will exclaim, “I had no idea you could put loquat in a fruit tart!”