Dessert Pies and Tarts

I'll claim two reasons for not blogging much lately:
1) I'm spending way too much time at work writing technical documents. When I get home, the last thing I want to do is more writing on a computer.
2) My life seems just a little boring right now, and I'm having trouble thinking of things that would be somewhat interesting to blog about.

But, we had a little fun Monday evening at another community ed class: Dessert Pies and Tarts, taught by Tom, a chef from one of our favorite restaurants. You may recall our pie class with Lorraine earlier this year; this week's class gave us another data point and another set of recipes for comparison and consumption. Tom's pie crust recipe requires 3 hours of chilling, so he demonstrated his crusts, but pre-made the dough that we used in class; we spent most of the evening making the fillings and eating the results.

It was a fairly big class, with about 15 people making 6 pies and tarts. I worked on the Date and Goat Cheese Tart team, while Mike made a Butternut Squash Pie (aka "Pumpkin" Pie). Other teams make Apple Pie, Apple Cranberry Pie, Pear and Brown Butter Galette, and Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Tart. Six pies cut into 16 pieces: not a very nutritious dinner, but certainly a delicious one.

All the pies and tarts were good (although we think the Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Tart was overcooked). The crusts were flaky, and the traditional pies (still quite warm from the oven) were tasty. But the Date and Goat Cheese Tart was surprisingly good, with the flavors of dates, cheese, and the sweet tart dough blending together in a perfectly balanced way that was just right. I think we'll have to make that one again sometime.