mmm... Berry Tarts

My entry into this month's Sugar High Friday's is:

Tantalizing Berry Tarts

I took the recipe from one of my childhood cookbooks The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook by Kate Macdonald illustrated by Barbara Di Lella. The recipe in the book calls for raspberries, but I did a mixture of both raspberries and blackberries.

My sister and I loved Anne of Green Gables and the whole Anne series by L. M. Montgomery. I think I read every Anne book out there at least 5 times and still to this day, if I'm flipping through the channels and I see one of the PBS specials I have to stop and watch the whole show. When I think of Canada I think of that precocious red-headed orphan and Prince Edward Island.

The raspberries and blackberries remind me of the summers spent in northern Minnesota. While, not Canada, the BWCA is about as close as you can get. My family would take a week each summer and travel up to a camp outside of Ely, MN. We would spend the week hiking, canoeing, and if it was the season, picking and eating all of the berries we could find. My mom makes the best blueberry pies.

Now back to the tarts...

I of course, modified the crust of the recipe to be gluten-free. I used the rich pastry recipe from Rebecca Reilly's Gluten-Free Baking. I have had mixed results with some of her recipes in the past, but I had dry cottage cheese in the fridge from when M went shopping and neither of us were going to eat it. The crust turned out great, although it did not brown evenly. Be warned though, the tart crust is definitely best day of, after one night on my cake plate it began to get a little soft. Next time I might prebake the crust.

The tarts turned out well, the crust rich and buttery and the filling was sweet and smelled of summer. What a great way for a girl in Atlanta to remember her northern summers!