Don’t you just love it when the stars align and a dish just seems meant to be? Take this strawberry cream cheese tart, for example. The first sign – we received two pounds of beautiful organic strawberries in our produce bin. One pound is game for just being eaten straight in our house, but a second pound begs to be made into some wonderful dessert. Second – my best friend Amanda and her husband were coming over for dinner, and this dessert happens to be one of her favorites. Third, this tart is an old recipe from my early days of blogging that deserved some tweaking as well as an updated photo.
I swapped out the original tart dough for this version from Baking Illustrated, which has become my go-to recipe. It is buttery and tender, and perfectly compliments whatever fillings you choose to top it with. It is rare for the crust to be the star of a tart or pie, but the last time I made this fruit tart, it was the crust everyone was raving about the most. The original version called for a layer of plain melted chocolate in the bottom of the tart crust. While tasty, the hardened chocolate made for extremely awkward slicing and even more awkward eating. This time around I replaced the chocolate layer with dark chocolate ganache which was much easier to cut and to eat. So here you go – an old favorite made even better. Enjoy!