La Palette's (Raspberry) Tart

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was inspired from a Parisian café, La Palette. It is a simple tart, using jam and fruit as the filling. Dorie's recipe calls for strawberry jam and fresh strawberries, but I decided to go with a twist on this tart.

I've been enjoying the taste of raspberries lately, and saw a post recently on Elle's blog mentioning the pairing of raspberries with lime. I decided to indulge in her recent obsession and dove into this tart with the thought of mixing raspberry and lime. I thought twice about it while picking up the fruit - this is a lot of raspberries, and it's going to be paired with raspberry jam, then followed up by lime flavor. Won't that be too tart? Then I reminded myself that a TART was the point of this recipe (my first time making one - shame on my self-doubt).

Added to Dorie's Sweet Tart Dough was the zest of two small limes, plus the juice of half of one of those limes. It made the dough a bit more moist than I was expecting, but it worked out fine in the end. After mixing it all together, the dough was lightly fragrant with lime. As I usually do with limes and lemons, the leftover pieces were thrown into the sink garbage disposal. It makes the kitchen smell great for a few hours, and it's much more fun than just tossing them in the garbage.

The dough was pressed in to a 9-inch tart pan and wrapped tightly, then stored in the freezer overnight. After bringing it to my brother's house, where family was meeting up, I stored it again in the freezer until it was about time for some dessert. After a quick trip in the oven, the tart shell was ready (no cracks, so the extra dough Dorie suggested be set aside wasn't used). Scooped on a generous portion of Trader Joe's raspberry jam (which turns out is my sister-in-law's favorite) and piled on the rinsed and dried raspberries. I didn't add any sugar to them, but I did serve alongside some freshly whipped cream that my brother whipped up (add a small amount of sugar and vanilla to the cream - it's simple but great).

I cut the tart into 8 slices (Dorie calls for 6, but we had extra dessert that my mom brought, and were all feeling a bit full at that point from a nice dinner) and served with the aforementioned whipped cream. The consensus across the board was that this tart was great. The lime background in the shell definitely added depth to the raspberry flavor, something I wasn't quite expecting. I would definitely make this again (and plan on it) without changing a single thing. Of course, with my newly found appreciation for tarts, I'll probably play around with various recipes - and fruits, depending on the season - but this raspberry and lime tart will always be something to fall back on if I have a need to impress.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, p. 374