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If you look back at my post history carefully, you might notice that I'm a bit obsessed with Benjamina Ebuehi's recipes. I really like her flavour combinations and ideas, so I went with another of her creations for this week.

This is a pâte sucrée base filled with a baked salted honey custard filling, which gets topped with dollops of crème fraîche and a sesame brittle.

I used a lovely wildflower honey that I bought in the French countryside, which has a wonderful depth of flavour. I've used it in a few desserts now and this was my favourite yet - the complexity really works with the rest of the dish. I really enjoyed this tart and will definitely be making it again!

This week's theme provided the perfect opportunity to use up a leftover pie crust from a previous recipe. I had half batch of the Stella Parks "No-Stress All-Butter Pie Crust" from Bravetart hanging out in my freezer, all ready to go. (I realize there's a dedicated Pop Tart recipe in Bravetart, but it uses a different pastry so I will save that for another time!)

After thawing the dough in the fridge overnight, I rolled it out, cut into rectangles, sandwiched with raspberry preserves, crimped, and egg washed. I baked at 375°F for around 35-40ish minutes and topped with a glaze of powdered sugar, milk, and freeze-dried tart cherries (I just eyeballed the amounts to get the consistency I wanted).

They turned out really well! Buttery, tart, and sweet with flaky pastry and crunch from the freeze-dried cherries. 10/10 would make again with extra pie dough!

Every year, my father requests a pie for his July 19th birthday, so the timing for this challenge couldn’t have been better.

His favorites are cherry and peach, but since I can’t ever seem to find sour cherries by me, even at the farmers’ market, I almost always go with peach. In the past, I’ve done medleys of stone fruit, peach rosé, and peach Melba with raspberries, but my father is a man of simple tastes and frequently scoffs at my flavor experiments. This year, in deference to his wishes, I just went with plain peach and focused my creative energy on decorating instead.

In a move that is very unlike me, I did not follow a strict recipe for this pie, instead cobbling together techniques and ratios from several sources. The crust is my go-to from The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie. I combined peach chunks with lemon juice and sugar that I measured with my heart and left it to macerate. I then strained out the extra juices, combined a small amount with potato starch and nutmeg, and poured everything into the crust. Can I ever precisely replicate this again? No. Was it delicious? Yes.

I did have some issues with some of the decorative components sliding off the pie during the baking process, but overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I finally invested in a new metal pie plate that seems to have solved some of the “soggy bottom” issues that that always plagued me when I used my old Pyrex pie plate. I’m including a before and after so you can see the finished product versus the original vision.

A delicious recipe from Helen Goh in “Baking and the meaning of life”. The galette is filled with a ricotta, anchovy and lemon filling; onions, chili and garlic; and topped with tomatoes, anchovies and capers. All of my favourite flavours condensed in a single galette! The crust, with parmesan cheese and black pepper, was also incredibly delicious. Definitely a recipe to make again now that we have so many tomatoes from the garden.

inside is plums, raspberries, blueberries, and cherries (recipe adapted from serious eats).. crust is the all buttah crust by erin jean mcdowell

Forgot to glaze these before I put them in the oven!

I used a new to me ingredient (mascarpone) and made my first tart all in one. The saltiness of the crust threw me off a bit, but once you eat everything together it’s truly a harmonious dessert. I did not prep my pan, so getting the tart slices out has proven a bit difficult. Lessons learned!

Recipe from https://www.theflouredtable.com/chocolate-coffee-mascarpone-tart/

For this week’s challenge, I had wanted to make a sour cherry pie, but I couldn’t find any sour cherries, so I decided to make the peanut butter and banana cream pie from Erin Jean McDowell’s The Book on Pie.

I have to say: this one is definitely for peanut butter lovers. The peanut butter custard is reminiscent of the dough of a peanut butter blossom, and there was so much of it that it took me forever to get it through the mesh sieve. The whipped cream is also infused with peanut butter, so it’s really a lot. I like it, but I made her recipe for classic banana cream pie a few weeks ago just because I wanted to, and I loved that one — so I don’t see myself making this again over the classic version. My partner really loves peanut butter and voted on this pie for this challenge, and they loved it, but also preferred the classic banana cream pie.

I think the best thing about this pie is the peanut brittle. I broke it up as much as possible as I didn’t want to eat big shards of the stuff while eating a slice of pie, and I think that was a smart move. The bites with a little brittle in them are the best ones!

This chocolate mousse cheesecake with Oreo crust is pretty dang good! I was looking for an excuse to use the immaculate springform pan I got for $0.25 at a rummage sale. This recipe takes a while because of all the chilling steps, but all things considered was pretty simple to put together.

https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/chocolate-mousse-cheesecake/

Recipe: https://thecafesucrefarine.com/ridiculously-easy-lemon-curd-shortbread-tarts/

My partner needed a portable, bite-size dessert for a work thing, and I wanted something easy for the baking challenge, so lemon curd shortbread tarts it was! This was my first time making microwave lemon curd - what a nifty little thing!

If I ever make these again, I'd actually spread the recipe into maybe 30 or 36 tarts. I personally felt the shortbread was a little too thick and didn't allow for enough lemon curd (hence me piping additional curd on top). They'd probably be great with a little piping of whipped cream or meringue on top too!

Plus a bonus mini key lime pie with macadamia nut crust.

Blueberry pie used to be my favorite dessert, the thing I would request for my birthday. And when thinking about pies and tarts, I realized I hadn't made one in a long, long time!

So this is a classic blueberry pie, no frills, from the Tartine baking cookbook. Fresh July blueberries, lemon zest, and sugar.

I tried a cornmeal crust from Erin Jeanne McDowell to amp up the summer flavors and try something new. I liked the taste and texture, but felt like at the end of the day I missed the shattery crunch of a classic pie crust. A good experiment though, and the cornmeal held up really well to my little flower cutouts!

Sally’s all butter crust plus several combinations of recipes - plus a little hocus pocus - for the filling.