A Delicious Fruit Tart

Sometimes you get bored. When I get bored and I’m in my kitchen I like to goof off with the ingredients I have to make something fun. I had some kumquats, strawberries, and ewe cream cheese laying around and I needed something to make with them. So I says to myself, “self let’s make a fruit tart.”

Well actually I said, “self let’s make a cheesecake.” Unfortunately though I didn’t have enough ewe cream cheese on hand to make a full blown cheesecake so what I did instead was make a fruit tart. This was really tasty.

One other minor thing was the whole graham cracker crust thing, yeah I had no graham crackers. But I did have cinnamon toast crunch cereal, which I thought would be a great replacement. And it was.

So instead of a cheesecake with a strawberry kumquat topping, I had a fruit tart with a cheese filling and strawberry kumquat topping.

Kumquats are great for desserts, they retain a great crunch and if they’re ripe enough they’re like little delicious sour oranges. They bring a ridiculous aroma to your dessert. Kumquats are native to south Asia and the Pacific. Kumquats have a nice little bit of Vitamin C to go along with other vitamins and minerals. They’re not particularly nutrient dense but they do make for a perfect addition to any dessert.

This dish was really easy to make and you can obviously sub out my ingredients for more traditional cheesecake or tart ingredients. This dish for me just represented that cooking or baking doesn’t necessarily always mean you have to have all the right ingredients to make something delicious. If you think critically, you can use what you have in your pantry to deliver a great dish no matter what the circumstance is.

Also kumquat sounds funny and sounds like it should be a bad word. K Bye.

Recipe- Strawberry Kumquat Fruit Tart

Ingredients

For the filling

2 Cups of Ewe Cream Cheese * This is just what I had laying around, you can use regular cream cheese it will probably taste better*

1/2 Cups of Powdered Sugar

2 Large Eggs

2 Tsp. Corn Starch

1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract

For the topping

1/2 Cup of Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup of White Sugar

1 Cup of Sliced Kumquats

2 Cups of Diced and Hulled Strawberries

1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract

2 Tbsp. Butter

For the Crust

1 Cup Walnuts

2 Cups of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal Crumbs (or Graham Cracker Crumbs)

5 Tbsp. of Coconut Oil or Butter

Method

First make your crust, in a food processor add your cereal crumbs, walnuts, and coconut oil.

Process until it forms into a fine crumby paste. Grease a 9 inch pie dish.

Press it against 9 inch pie dish, if you have a spring form pan more power to you, I did not.

Bake it in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Once your crust is ready, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool.

Prepare your topping, basically heat the butter in a frying pan then add your kumquats, strawberries,corn starch, sugar, and vanilla to the pan. Cook at a medium heat for about 20 minutes until the topping is a bright red and it’s mildly sweet with some tartness. Be sure to keep it warm.

Now make your filling, mix your cream cheese , corn starch, sugar, and vanilla extract together. Beat the two eggs and then mix them into your filling so you have a nice smooth mixture.

Once your crust has sufficiently cooled, pour your filling over top the crust and bake in the oven for 50 to 60 minutes at 350F allowing the filling to set, but make sure you don’t burn it.  Without about 10 minutes to spare, pour your topping over it so it bakes on.

After that allow it to chill in the refrigerator overnight or for atleast 6 hours. Then serve!