Strawberry Puff Tartlets

In the summer, I don’t like to spend a lot of time baking or fussing with my desserts (I do enough of that during the course of my work day). I prefer to take advantage of the bounty of fresh, ripe berries available and let their flavor be the focus. I also don’t have a problem lightening my workload 

by taking a shortcut or two, like buying store-bought puff pastry. I call this simple dessert a tartlet, but it’s really nothing more than a round of baked puff pastry that has not been allowed to rise, and which is then topped with a lemon pastry cream and quartered strawberries. The pastry rounds can be 

prepared a day in advance (as long as it’s not too humid), and stored in an airtight container. The pastry cream can be prepared up to 3 days in advance – just don’t fold in the whipped cream until you’re ready to assemble the tartlets, or the cream may weep (and so will you). You can 

change up the flavors here, in the pastry cream and in your choice of fruit topping. For the pastry cream, you can even substitute a fruit puree for 1 cup of the milk in the recipe, and top with an appropriate berry or fruit mate. A peach or plum pastry cream topped with thin slices of the fruit would be lovely, for example. If you do decide to use a fruit puree, reduce the lemon zest to 1 teaspoon.

Chocolate Glazed Vanilla Eclairs

My mother, who is Welsh, is the best hostess in the world. When you pay her a visit, she makes you feel like Queen (or King, if you’re a guy) for a Day. Even today, at the age of 87, she hosts elaborate bridge parties and luncheons with wonderful food. When I was a kid, I remember friends dropping by our house 

spontaneously. Instead of panicking, my Mom casually whipped up a batch of whipped cream-filled cream puffs to serve the visitors along with their tea. We were all pretty impressed with that trick. She was, and is, never afraid to try anything new, no matter how daunting the recipe or technique. So it’s in the spirit of my mother’s 

cooking approach—sheer fearlessness—that I present a recipe for éclairs, filled with a lightened vanilla pastry cream and topped with a shiny bittersweet chocolate glaze. Making choux paste, the dough for cream puffs and éclairs, is a technique that many find intimidating, though it’s actually fairly easy to put together. The 

only problem with homemade éclairs is that they have multiple components—the dough, the filling and the glaze—and it takes time to make each and assemble the finished pastries. The trick here is to make the filling (minus the whipped cream) a day or two beforehand, so that you only have to make the choux paste and the 

glaze the day you plan to serve the éclairs. Though I made mine slightly smaller than standard bakery éclairs, you can make them any size you like, and you can also vary the flavor of the pastry cream filling (espresso pastry cream is great with the chocolate glaze). I recommend chilling the filled éclairs while you make the glaze, so that the glaze sets up faster on the cold pastry. And do serve them the day they’re made—you won’t have any trouble finding takers. ♥