My Man's Belly» Delicious Recipes and Food Ideas – My Man’s Belly

Easy Blueberry Kiwi Lemonade Tart Recipe

Pamela — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:53:30 +0000

As you may have noticed, or not, I haven’t posted in over a week and that has left my fabulous Blueberry Pie Martini recipe front and center in my absence. While I don’t believe most of you care what my excuse reason is for all of this, here it is anyway in a nutshell (notice that food reference there). I experienced a bit of a compatibility issue with the look of my site and the technology running it – that’s why it looks a bit different now (in terms of relationships: my old theme got comfortable and stopped putting out so I traded her in for a younger model that puts out like a slutty college co-ed). Then I went to a food blogger conference (quit laughing…I really did and yes, they do have these things. If someone can make $ on it…it will be done.) so I was gone for a few days. Well, I’m back bitches and ready to rock and roll! Time to get fruity.

Fresh fruit tarts are a great dessert. A fruit tart is an easy dessert recipe that can be changed up based on the kinds of fruit, and chocolate (yes, I said chocolate), you like and what’s in season. But a fruit tart is also a lot like a mullet (you know, that hair “style” that’s all business in the front and a party in the back). Or maybe a fruit tart is like what you get when you invite Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson to the Emmy’s. You expect to get Tom Hanks, all prim and proper with a well put together look (fresh fruit arranged artistically and glazed to perfection).

Then you bite into the tart and get a bit of a Rita Wilson surprise (WTF is she wearing? She looks like something from the Whoville Christmas parade while wearing Cherry Toppers’ lucite stripper shoes draped in Christmas lights) with a sliver of white chocolate that melds magically with a crisp and tangy lemon flavored crust. You just don’t see that coming when you look at that artfully decorated fresh fruit tart.

I realize that easy dessert recipes, that aren’t cookies or brownies, are pretty hard to come by…that’s another reason why I made this fruit tart and think that you should definitely add this to your recipe box. I used white chocolate with this one because I like the subtle flavor that it has and how it combines with the blueberries and kiwi, doesn’t compete with them. But you can also use dark chocolate with these fruits or use dark chocolate with strawberries, mandarin oranges or blueberries.

Usually these fruit tarts are made with a pastry crust. It was too hot and I was just plain lazy so I decided not to mess with a pastry crust and used lemon cookies. I’m a big fan of minimizing the number of dishes I dirty (since I’m the one who has to wash them). When you make a crushed cookie crust, you get to pour the ingredients into the pan and smoosh them into place – no rolling, folding, lifting and praying (that the dough is the right size, doesn’t tear or fall apart as you put it into the pan). Plus the lemon gives all of these ‘soft’ flavors a bit of a flavor boost.

So go ahead, volunteer to bring dessert to the next party you go to. Everyone is going to love it and ask for your recipe. It’s up to you if you want to share it or not.

Relationship Advice

As dated as it may sound…men still want an angel on their arm and a whore in the bedroom. For those of you ladies out there who are trying to figure out how you can get a guy to realize that this describes you to a T let me help you out. Of course, this also makes a bit of an assumption that you are not going after a guy who is dumb as a box of rocks. These guys wouldn’t be able to handle the subtlety (meaning – these clods require the obvious painted on your naked body).

Rocking the pencil skirt, high heels, cotton blouse, glasses and an up-do is usually a sure sign that you’re the female equivalent of a mullet. For the record, “the party in the back” part is more figurative than literal in this sense.

Can you talk a little blue? No, I don’t mean talking about how your job sucks, your neighbor is an idiot, your mother is driving you crazy or how many milligrams your Prozac prescription is. Blue talk is using those words that are considered less than ladylike or professional. You don’t want to use the salty language to the point where you would be compared to a truck driver, but the occasional, well-edited f-word gives a bit of a clue that you aren’t a part of the uptight brigade.

Do you make eye contact when you’re talking to a guy that you’re interested in? Making eye contact, a subtle touch of his arm or leg during a conversation let’s him know that you’re interested. The way you hold your head and shoulders shows him how assertive you are. Assertive women are read as being assertive in the bedroom as well.

Don’t let your buttoned up look confuse, or put off, those guys that you’re interested or entice those boring guys you’re not interested in. Make sure that you are putting forward all of the right signals let him know the kind of tigress that lies behind the blouse.

My Man's Belly

Makes 1 8 inch tart

Ingredients

Lemonade Crust Recipe

1 1/2 Cups Mother’s Iced Lemonade Cookies (or other hard lemon cookie – not a cookie with a filling)
5 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter (melted)
3 Tablespoons Sugar

Pastry Cream Filling Recipe – from Cookn With Class – Paris Cooking Classes

I highly recommend using weights for this recipe (you can get a great digital scale for $20)

8 Ounces Whole Milk
1 Ounce Corn Starch
2 Ounces Sugar
1 Tablespoon Whole Egg (crack egg into a small dish, whisk the egg and spoon out amount needed)
2 Egg Yolks
1 Ounce Unsalted Butter
1/8 Ounce Vanilla Extract

White Chocolate Filling Recipe

4 Ounces Good Quality White Chocolate (such as Ghirardelli or Lindt)

Fresh Fruit Topping Recipe

3/4 – 1 Cup Fresh Blueberries (washed and dried)
2 Kiwi Fruit (peeled and sliced into 1/8″ thick slices)
1/2 Cup Apricot Preserves (melted)

Directions

Lemonade Crust

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

Add the cookies to your food processor and pulse until finely ground crumbs. Add melted butter and sugar to processor. Process until all of the ingredients come together and look like wet sand.

Press into an 8″ tart pan with removable bottom. Using your hands and fingers evenly spread the mixture on the bottom and up the sides of the pan. You can also use a springform pan or solid pie pan for this. It’s much easier to slice and serve if you use a pan with a removable bottom.

Put the tart pan on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 – 15 minutes. The crust will be a light brown and somewhat firm to the touch when done.

Remove from oven and set aside to cool.

Pastry Cream

Dissolve cornstarch in 1/8 cup of the milk. Combine remaining milk with sugar and bring to a boil.

Whisk eggs into the cornstarch mixture. Whisk 1/3 of the boiling milk mixture into the egg and cornstarch mixture. Once thoroughly mixed pour the egg mixture into the boiling milk mixture and continue to whisk for about one more minute. (You’ll see the mixture thickening.)

Remove from heat and whisk in the butter and vanilla.

Transfer the mixture to another container and cover the surface with a layer of plastic wrap. Place into refrigerator to chill.

Assembly

Once the crust is at room temperature you can begin to assemble your tart.

Finely chop the white chocolate. Place it into a small glass bowl and melt it in the microwave. Use short, 30 second, intervals to melt the white chocolate. After each 30 second interval, remove the container and stir the chocolate pieces. This small amount will probably only take 1 minute in total.

Pour the melted white chocolate over the bottom of the cookie crust. Smooth the chocolate to ensure that it is a consistent thickness. Let it sit for 1 hour to harden or put it into the refrigerator to speed up the process.

Spoon the pastry cream into the cookie crust and evenly cover the chocolate. You can make this layer as thick or thin as you like. There may be leftover pastry cream.

Lay the fruit on top of the tart in any design you desire. For the circles, start in the center and work your way to the outer edges.

Melt the apricot preserves in the same way you melted the white chocolate. Using a pastry or delicate silicone brush, lightly brush the surface of the fruit with the melted preserves.

Serve

-This tart should be served the same day it’s made. You can make up the white chocolate covered crust as well as the pastry cream a day or two in advance of when you will be putting the tart together and serving. Just keep them separate until assembling.

Tags: dark chocolate, Dessert, dessert recipes, easy dessert recipe, easy dessert recipes, Easy Recipe, fresh fruit tart, pastry cream, Relationship Advice, Vegetarian Recipes, white chocolate

Infused Vodka and a Blueberry Pie Martini Recipe

Pamela — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 05:14:18 +0000

We have been going crazy around here with the fruit this summer…neither of us can seem to get enough of it and I also admitted that we have become the royal house of lush. I guess you could call us a couple of fruity booze hounds. Whatever! It’s summer time and for a change, we are both able to somewhat enjoy the summer.

For all of the cooking that I do, I am a food blogger you know….I somehow am not quite able to get the fresh fruit I buy cooked into anything. Not a single blueberry has made it into my mom’s blueberry pie recipe, peaches aren’t making it into cobblers or crisps and cherries….well, those did manage to find themselves in a black forest cake as well as some maraschino cherries and one other surprise item. But the summer fruit has pretty much been consumed as is.

The Mix Master General (that would be Craig) has been playing around with the contents of our liquor cabinet. Okay, it’s more like a liquor closet but shhhhh don’t tell anyone. He’s been playing around, a lot, with vodka martini recipes. He doesn’t mess with the gin martini recipes, make that recipe…that’s sacred. But vodka is one of those liquors that is chameleon like, which makes it a lot of fun to work with. Vodka takes on the flavor or flavors of what it’s mixed with. For the most part, any vodka that we have is just plain vodka. The only flavored version that we use is vanilla which is a necessary ingredient for the dessert martini. Craig played around with sweet and savory martini recipes, but just couldn’t get one that either of us liked.

I finally decided to take matters into my own hands. I picked up some blueberries, I bought a rather large bottle of vodka, I found a large canning jar and set out to make my own infused vodka – with fruit. Finally, some of this summer fruit was going to be made into something. Pure genius, I told myself, as I set out to combine the two things that both Craig and I were partaking of this summer and putting them together into one harmonious package (yes, it’s okay if you need to excuse yourself to hurl…I just did).

Three days later I had created a spectacular blueberry infused vodka that could be turned into a simple blueberry martini (and not one using that fake blueberry vodka) or a gimlet (I highly recommend this btw). Of course, I had to take this one step further. I was still somewhat embarrassed that I had not made a blueberry pie yet this summer. Enter the blueberry pie martini. I used a recipe that we had for a key lime martini and substituted the blueberry vodka for the key lime liqueur. You really must try making your own infused vodka while summer fruit is at its peak.

Relationship Advice

It’s really simple today. We’ve had a particularly draining week and the next couple are going to be even busier. This weekend is being spent enjoying the nice summer weather (we’re finally getting here in LA). We’re sitting around the fire pit with blueberry pie martini’s, taking naps and cooking easy to prepare meals together. My suggestion is…you should do the same.

My Man's Belly

Blueberry Infused Vodka Recipe

Makes 1 Liter

Ingredients

1 Pound Blueberries (washed and picked over for bad berries)
2 Pieces of Lemon Peel (peel the lemon with peeler so there is no pith attached – that’s the white stuff)
4 Stems of Fresh Thyme (optional)
1 Liter Plain Vodka (you do not need to use uber expensive vodka for this)

Directions

In a clean, air tight jar, smash the blueberries. (You need to smash them so that the vodka can penetrate the skins and get all the flavor out.)
Add the lemon peel and thyme.
Pour the vodka over the top.
Seal the jar and shake it up to distribute the lemon peel and the thyme.
Set the jar in a cool place.
Gently turn the jar end over end and side to side once a day for 3 days.
On the third day it’s time to strain and bottle your blueberry vodka.
Pour the contents of the jar into a large strainer that has been placed over a bowl or pitcher.
Gently push on the solids to get most of the liquid out.
Throw away the solids.
Line a funnel with a double layer of cheesecloth.
Pour the blueberry vodka slowly through the cheesecloth into the bottle (you can use the original vodka bottle for this).
Cap up the bottle and let it sit overnight.

If you see solids in the bottle, the next day, you’ll need to repeat the cheesecloth straining process. You don’t want solids left in the bottle, but a second strain should be all you will need.

My Man's Belly

Blueberry Pie Martini Recipe

Makes 1 Martini

Ingredients

1 1/2 Ounces Vanilla Vodka
2/3 Ounce Blueberry Vodka
2/3 Ounce Rose’s Lime Juice
Crushed Graham Crackers

Directions

Pour the vanilla vodka, blueberry vodka and rose’s lime juice into a shaker filled with ice. Shake well.
Dip the rim of the martini glass into either water or Rose’s lime juice. Then dip it into the crushed graham crackers.
Strain drink into glass and garnish with 2 blueberries if you like and serve.

Tags: blueberries, blueberry pie recipe, drink recipes, Easy Recipes, gin martini recipes, Relationship Advice, vodka martini recipes