Ladybug Tart
While traveling throughout Europe this summer, my daughter picked up a children's magazine at a newsstand in Germany. The magazine, Filly, contained a page with a recipe – but since my daughter cannot yet read, it was clear that the magazine's primary draw was the included toy: A Filly pony – similar to My Little Pony.
Now back home, my daughter rediscovered the magazine, leafed through it, and saw images of a “Lady Bug Cake.” With unprecedented enthusiasm, she informed me that we just HAD to make this cake. Thus, we went to the grocery store immediately, purchased the necessary ingredients, and made our cake – or more precisely, the famous Ladybug Tart.
Now, there were a few issues with the Filly recipe:
Some of the items the original recipe included are hard to find here. Thus, I omitted them, resulting in a Lady Bug that, for the moment, does not have legs.
The dough recipe resulted in a rather dense and chewy tart – not much to my liking, but a sure winner in my daughter's eyes. Her exact words to our neighbor earlier this morning were “We made the best crust ever!” I modified the recipe a bit to make it appeal to a more grown-up audience as well. I still would not claim that this is the best tart in the world, but to my five-year old's palate, this is clearly culinary heaven.
Ingredients:
Biscuit Crust:
6 Eggs
8 oz Cup Sugar
pinch of Salt
Vanilla Extract
7 oz Cup Flour
5 oz Cup Cornstarch
Toppings:
Frozen or fresh Raspberries
2 ½ cups sugar
2 Tbs Pectin
1 Tbs fresh Lemon juice
Nutella
Oreos
Toffifee (if available)
M&M's
Tart:
Separate the eggs.
Beat egg yolks until creamy.
Add sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix well.
Beat egg whites until fluffy, slow add to egg yolk/sugar mixture.
Mix flour and cornstarch.
Pour flour and cornstarch mixture through a sieve onto the liquid batter (this helps in ensuring the resulting dough will be light and fluffy).
Add a tiny bit of Vanilla extract for extra flavoring.
Fold flour mixture into the liquid batter. Do NOT stir quickly – this is a much more delicate and deliberate process. You do not want the mixture to turn into a dense liquid – slowly folding the flour mixture into the batter will allow the ingredients to integrate fully while maintaining a fluffy consistency.
Pour batter into an 11-inch greased tart pan. I prefer silicone pans because the make it super easy to remove the baked tart.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Bake tart for 15-20 minutes – until it attains a golden color.
Let tart cool before decorating it.
Raspberry Topping:
Put raspberries, sugar, pectin, and lemon juice into a sauce pan.
Bring to a low boil.
Once the mixture reaches its boiling point, reduce to a simmer and let bubble until the raspberries have completely disintegrated and the mixture starts to feel a little stiff and sticky.
Remove from sauce pan and let cool down.
Cut a narrow slice from the tart – this will be the separation of the lady bug's wings.
Spread Nutella on the part of the tart opposite the triangular separation you just created. This will be the head. Place two Toffifee to form the base of the eyes. Add two M&M's to complete the eyes.
Spread the raspberry mixture on the rest of the tart.
Use the Oreos and other M&M's to create the ladybug's dots.
If you want, add whatever other candies you want to complete the ladybug. Sometimes, my local store has chocolate sticks, which would make excellent legs – but they didn't have any when we shopped for our ingredients.
Have Fun!
