SUMMERTIME!

One of the reasons we live where we do is because of the summertime. It means so many things and one of those is berries! And now that the sun has come out, along with some heat, the berries are finally coming in.

Very few things compare to picking a handful of fresh berries for a bowl of yogurt or a smoothie in your pajamas. When the first full harvests of strawberries and raspberries were ready we decided we'd make a festive holiday tart for a 4th of July celebration.

We planted two blueberry plants this year and hopefully we'll be harvesting blueberries in a year or two. Until then we picked up some at the farmers' market along with some golden raspberries, which were fantastic. They tasted like a luscious piece of melon.

The fruit tart was terrific. Made from basic tart ingredients such as a pate sucre or sugery pie crust made with room temp butter instead of cold butter. We didn't have any pie weights so we used some dried beans, which ended up denting the pie crust with bean size marks. We think it added to the overall yumminess.

The tart custard was a typical traditional sweet custard made from milk boiled with a vanilla bean, egg yolks, sugar and thickeners flour and cornstarch. The combo of a sweet cookie like crust, creamy sweet custard and divine berries is our definition of a triple threat! We're devouring berries as fast as we can, while they last. And this year looks like it will be a short berry season.