Mini Mix Tarts Cranberry, Raspberry, Pear, Ginger and Clove

I had a lot of cranberries left over from the bundt cake and so I decided to make a small tart using them and some pears that had lingered a tad too long in our kitchen. I also had a smidge left of the pate sucre, so I simply rolled it out, popped it in small tart pans, and baked them until golden brown. 

The filling was stewed pears, cranberries, raspberries, a little bit of finely chopped ginger, a splash of pear liquor, some cloves, a bunch of sugar and a thyme sprig that was removed once I had finished simmering the filling. The consistency was like that of a jam, and so I added a little bit of corn starch to thicken it. I popped it into the ready shells, garnished with finely chopped ginger and a sprig of thyme. Easy as that. 

The tarts were well, tart but the combination of the sugary, buttery sucre meant that they weren't an unpleasant tart. I was quite pleased with these. 

Cranberry and Spice Bundt

This past week I have been working on cakes. And, I have to say I don't love them half as much as I love making tarts. There seems to be far less fresh produce used, and this week we made many cakes that seemed, well, very similar. We basically stuck to using a kugelhopf pan (basically a smaller version of a bundt). So, I wasn't utterly thrilled with cakes, but I thought I'd attempt to apply my knowledge at home. I found this lovely recipe in this months (well I guess technically next months - November) Bon Appetite. From one of my favorite bakers Dorrie Greenspan. 

It consists of a spicy cake with Chinese five spice, which unfortunately I didn't have. So I simply used a mortar and pestle to grind up cloves, fennel seeds, cinnamon, and ginger and called it good. The U-districts farmers market  http://www.seattlefarmersmarkets.org/markets/u_district had fresh, beautiful cranberries. So I bought a punnet, and used some in Dorries recipe. I also used dried cherries instead of dried cranberries because that's what I had hanging around in the cupboard. I changed the icing as well, because I don't like orange, so I used a cherry liquor, a bit of milk and then a bunch of sifted icing sugar for the recipe. 

This was a seriously nice cake, packed full of goodies. Highly recommended!