peach + cream cheese tart.

I think I may have said this before.

Imperfection can sometimes be pretty perfect.

I have to admit – I haven’t had many disasters in my experience in the kitchen yet. I could probably count on my fingers the number of times I’ve royally screwed things up.  And I guess if we’re saying “royally,” then we’re talking one hand.

I leave this to the fact that for the most part, I’ve chosen good recipes from good chefs to learn from. Yes, it’s pretty difficult to screw up a recipe from Ina.

The other piece of the pie here – or should I say tart {sorry, couldn’t resist} – is that it’s actually quite difficult to “royally” screw something up. We’re talking making something that’s inedible. Unsalvageable. Something that must head straight into the garbage can.

To tell you the truth, I can’t remember ever doing this. Don’t be mad at me.

Like I said, I blame Ina.

Still – I’ve come pretty close. I’ve slightly screwed things up. I’ve made minor – sometimes creeping toward major – mistakes.

Like when I made this tart. I didn’t realize I needed a 10-inch tart pan, and instead used my 9-inch. I mean, really? Now we need two different sizes of tart pans? The size of my kitchen just isn’t cut out for this, people. Ask Dan. He’s fast to tell me there’s no more room between the Christmas decorations and the cake dome under the sink of our second bathroom. True story.

The smart thing to do would have been to either cut the recipe down – though that can get tricky – or just not pour all of the filling into the pan. Duh. But I’m not always so smart.

The problem was, the cream cheese/mascarpone filling was just so lusciously good. I couldn’t possibly throw any of it away. I had to try to get it all in the pan. And if you’re all over there wondering, I wonder why she didn’t eat it – like with a spoon? Believe me. I did. There was a lot of it.

And then there was the tart dough. This was the first time I’d made one {unlike here, when I used a refrigerated pre-made crust}, and I had some trouble rolling it out. Usually, I don’t have these sorts of problems. Usually, I’m not cursing out pieces of dough and rolling pins in my kitchen. In the words of the great Tim Gunn, I made it work. There was a little too much dough, so I threw a lot of it away. And it was still a little too thick in the pan for my taste. But it was still damn good. I mean, it was a lemon zest tart crust. That’s right – lemon zest. In the crust. Good stuff.

So we’ve got lemon zest tart crust. A filling made of mascarpone and cream cheese. There were other things, like eggs, sugar, flour, and vanilla extract. But we don’t care so much about that stuff. We care about the cheese. And did I mention there were peaches?

After you {over}pour the cream cheese filling into the pan, you top it with peaches covered in cinnamon-sugar. This involves peeling and pitting the peaches, which was new to me. I used a vegetable peeler, and although I’m sure you can get some fancy peach-pitting device, I just cut them in half, ripped them apart, and cut the pits out myself. Easy enough. There was also a part about scoring the back of the peach halves. I did it, but I was confused. Was it just to make them pretty? Does it change how they cook? Who knows. I was much more concerned with the cinnamon-sugar party that came afterward. See? I don’t know everything. I mess things up. I don’t know much about fruit scoring, and I totally overflowed this gorgeous pile of deliciousness into a big mess.

But let’s get back to that part about salvaging. 

I knew it was going to overflow, so I put a pan lined in foil underneath the tart pan when I baked it. If I hadn’t done that, it would have been bad. I would have felt really bad for poor Daniel. After it cooled, I was able to just cut the overflowed mess right off the edges. I finished the tart with a simple glaze of apricot jam, brandy, and a bit of water, and all was right in the world. So, I did what anyone else in my position would do.

I got drunk.

I’m skipping over a few things here. We were having dinner guests that night, so I had a lot of other food to prep. So I prepped. I had wine. I cooked. I had more wine. And by the time our friends arrived, I was feeling great. We had wine. I forgot to take a picture of my tart in its whole, beautifully salvaged form. It happens. Life is all about imperfections. That’s what makes it perfect.

To get the recipe and create your own perfect mess of imperfections, head on over to fellow Project Pastry Queen member Tara’s blog, Smells Like Home.