ALLCAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: Guava-Marzipan Tartlets Topped with Lemon Chantilly Cream & Poached Pear in Red Wine Sauce plus BONUS RECIPE

Did I do too much?

Yes.

Am I sorry? No. And also I had all this around the house due to a mixed-up grocery delivery presenting me with someone else's MASSIVE FUCK-OFF JAR of guava preserves and several Asian pears that immediately started to go south. I even had the pears poached in red wine sauce from the previous night as I'd made a simple syrup for cocktails out of the pear and, you know, some wine--the sauce is just the boiled fruit left over run through the food processor. VOILA.

And also also my first grader has gotten ALL THE WAY into the Great British Bake-Off and been begging to make fancy things. So we made a fancy thing.

BY THE WAY, "Chantilly cream"? OH SO FANCY? Yeah, it means you had whipped cream in the Chantilly region of France. It's literally just sweetened whipped cream with some kind of extract, usually vanilla, but DON'T IT MAKE WHIPPED CREAM SOUND EXTRA?

So I will be calling whipped cream that forever now. Maybe I'll even call it Chantilly cream when it comes out of a can. WHATEVER, THERE'S NO RULES ANYMORE. (Man, France really got in on the "yes, this is a thing other people make, but we made ours HERE, so ours is better; then we named it after our county, so if you aren't from our county, you can't have any" thing).

You could swap out just about any flavors in this thing, though, if you don't like or are allergic to guava (literally any smooth preserves), marzipan (just take it out, or make it with a different nut like pistachios, or put some raw nuts down on the bottom layer for crunch, or a different fruit, or even a layer of shredded coconut would be amazing), or lemon (it's just lemon extract and zest in the cream) or pears (make the syrup out of whatever you have and puree the leftover fruit).

Lastly, while there are a lot of moving parts to this, they're all dead simple on their own. The most time consuming thing is making pie crust from scratch, which I NOW ALWAYS DO, because it's much better, cheaper, and my girl at Smitten Kitchen taught me to make it faster than I can get to the store and back--and my store is literally two blocks away.

TIME FOR A TART ATTACK.

Ingredients

Crust:

     2 cups all-purpose flour

     2 sticks butter , ice-cold, sliced into small cubes

     1 teaspoon salt

     2 tablespoons sugar

     1- 1 1/4 cup cold water

     1 shot cold vodka (optional--this evaporates and leaves airpockets for extra-flaky crust)

Fillings:

     3/4 cup guava preserves (or other preserves, any sort of curd would be fantastic here, and that's the consistency you want)

Marzipan

     3/4 cup unsalted almonds (I used blanched slivered almonds)

     9 tablespoons powdered sugar

     1/2 teaspoon almond extract OR 1 1/2 teaspoons amaretto

     1-2 tablespoons cold water

Toppings:

Chantilly Cream

     1 pint heavy cream

     1 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract

     Zest of one large lemon

Red Wine-Poached Pear Sauce/Syrup

     1 large Asian Pear, cored and chopped into big chunks

     1/4 cup dry red wine

     1.5 cup white sugar

     1.5 cup cold water

     1/8 teaspoon cloves

     1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

SHAKE MY HAND, PAUL BOLLYWOOD

First, we make the crust. Put the diced butter in the freezer for a bit to get it extra cold. Combine salt, sugar, and flour in a large bowl, then add the butter cubes and combine with your hands (you can use a pastry cutter, but I never do) until the combined mixture has the consistency of small BBs or peas. Then add the vodka (if you're using it) and half the water. Mush with your hands until it starts to come together, then drizzle more water until something resembling an eldritch misshapen dough-lump forms.

Wrap up in saran wrap and stick it in the fridge for not less than one hour. This crust will keep for awhile this way, though, so you can make it way ahead of time. The proportions make enough for two crusts (as in a covered pie) or 24 tartlets. Cut recipe in half if you don't want so many.

While the pie crust sets, make the marzipan, pear sauce, and pear syrup. This stuff is SO CRAZY GOOD it's worth making all on its own. And it's dead simple: dump all the ingredients except the wine into a spaghetti pot, bring to a boil, stirring to combine. Once boiling, lower to a simmer. Add the wine after ten minutes on low. Let it cook down till reduced by at least half and thick enough to visibly coat the back of the spoon, at least half an hour, more likely 40-45 minutes.

While the fruit is cooing down, make the marzipan--again, dead easy. Put everything in the food processor and puree until a paste forms, the consistency of soft toothpaste. Scoop into a small bowl and set aside. Wipe out food processor.

Strain the red wine-pear syrup into a container of your choice, dump the goo into your now-clean food processor with a splash of good balsamic vinegar, give it a whirr until smooth, and you have an amazing cocktail syrup and quick jam once they've cooled. BONUS RECIPE!

Now we assemble everything!

Take your crust out of the fridge and place it on a well-floured surface. Well-flour your hands, too. sprinkle flour on top and roll out to a thickness of about 1/4 inch, standard pie crust thickness. Use a chic cocktail glass (I DID!) or any glass whose mouth is 2/3 inches across to cut out 20-24 circles. Press carefully into a VERY WELL GREASED muffin tin.* Seriously. Use butter and Pam. Get it all over that. Or use parchment paper/silicon cups. The jam WILL turn into industrial adhesive when it boils over.

Take a small bit of marzipan, around the size of a nickel. Roll into a ball with your hands and place into each tart-shell. Use your fingertip to gently flatten it into a disc. Do this for each tart-shell. Then scoop 1.5-2 tablespoons of guava preserves on top of the marzipan, repeating for every shell. (You can brush the edges of the crust with egg wash, if you like, I didn't bother BECAUSE EGGS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE FOR THAT KIND OF GANGSTA ACTIVITY. YELLA YELLA YOLKS, Y'ALL.)

Bake at 400 for 22-35 minutes. Now, I recognize that's quite a range. Start checking at 22, they won't be done before that. But depending on how brown you like your crust and how deep your muffin molds were, it could take anywhere in the neighborhood of ten minutes longer. With two different tins, but same temp, same ingredients, and same oven, my two batches were done at 27 minutes and 35 minutes. So monitor. You want a golden crust that feels solid when you tap on it, and bubbling innards, but not so bubbly they've run over the tin and turned totally black. GOOD LUCK, TEMPERATURE BUDDIES.

Allow tarts to cool COMPLETELY. Whipped cream is fast, so you don't need to make it until you're about to serve the tarts. When you zest your lemon, reserve a teaspoon or so for sprinkling on top.

Pour all ingredients into the bowl of a standing mixer or a large bowl with your handheld mixer standing nearby. The bowl should be cold, this really helps speed up the process with both whipped cream and egg whites. Stick it in the freezer for ten before you start.

Turn standing mixer handheld to medium-high or handheld to medium and whip until the consistency feels right to you: thick, silky, but not chunky.

Top each tart with a dollop of whipped cream, then a tiny spoonful of wine-pear sauce, and a dusting of lemon zest. Serve and bask in praise--I highly recommend serving these with espresso, the bitterness and the sweetness come together soooo well.

I AM SO PROUD OF THESE. YOU CAN SAY YOU INVENTED THEM, I DON'T MIND.

*A Note on the muffin tin. I made two batches, one with a standard muffin tin, and one, because I couldn't find my muffin tin for awhile, with a fancy cupcake tin that's supposed to make the cupcakes be shaped like roses. I have to admit, the roses-tin tarts came out significantly better, despite being harder to get out of the pan. And the bottoms were shaped like roses. I think it's the smaller-in-diameter but deeper molds that made the difference, so if you don't have a clearly stupid pan, and why would you, consider a popover pan or similar deeper-dish tin.