Dessert Person – Lauren Attempts to Bake

Blackberry Caramel Tart from “Dessert Person”

To say I was excited to make this is an understatement. I ordered all the special things (almond flour and a tart pan) online and “patiently” waited for them to come in. The moment the package was left at the door, I started baking.

This recipe starts with a pâté sucrée crust (basically just a sweet crust) that has roasted almond flour added in for a toasty twist. The dough seemed like it wouldn’t be enough for the 9 inch tart pan, especially as it didn’t even fill my tiny baby 3 cup food processor. Alas, it fit perfectly, and I only really had problems with it after baking, when it separated and cracked a bit. Claire wrote a solution for this in the book though, and I just mixed a bit of flour and water to make a little glue to patch everything up.

After the crust cooled and was quickly and quietly patched up, I started on the caramel.

I’ll just take a quick moment to say that the last time I made caramel, well I ended up in the ER. I really only just barely burned my fingers, but it wasn’t an experience I ever wanted to repeat. So this time, every single precaution was taken.

The caramel came together with no severe injuries, and after adding in the heavy cream, blackberries, salt and sugar, we were out of the Danger Zone. The next step was adding gelatin, which I had only ever worked with for jams. This part was painless as well, and within the hour I had a blackberry caramel that I really, really wanted to just eat with a spoon.

All that was left was to pour the caramel between the berries and chill! This recipe has an almost overwhelming number of steps, but in the end it was easy, and the results were very impressive.

Lime Bars from “Dessert Person”

Last night I got my copy of Claire Saffitz’s new cookbook, “Dessert Person,” and it might be the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. I’m determined to make every single recipe in this book, much to the detriment of my current jean size. I started with the Minty Lime Bars (page 155).

I didn’t have mint, or an 8×8 pan, so what I ended up with were super thin, tart and neatly snackable bars.

The recipe starts with a super simple shortbread dough, and having made a few of these before, this part was easy.

The next part was harder, just because I had never made any sort of curd or custard before and didn’t know what to expect, or any of the indicators that you’re on the right track. I miiiiight’ve slightly overbaked it, but I just had no idea when it was ready to come out.

After chilling for an hour and then dusting softly with powdered sugar, we had the final results. The combination of shortbread with the gooey, scrunch-up-your-face tartness of the lime curd was unbelievable.

I might’ve just picked this as the first recipe because I had almost all of the ingredients, but it was a great kickoff to my Julie and Julia moment of recreating every recipe in the book.