Fresh Peach Tartlet - It's Like a Peach Tart Only Smaller

Here is the peach tartlet video recipe I promised the other day. It's a Julia Child recipe from one of the cookbooks she did with Jacques Pepin. I was going to do this delicious dessert for the Julie & Julia post, but decided to go with the more substantial roast chicken recipe.

This is about the easiest "looks hard" pastry technique I know. You can make the pie crust dough if you want (I've also posted my mother's key lime pie video below so you can see how easy pie crust is), or you can grab a package of the Pillsbury pie crust that is in just about every store these days.

I usually don't give brand names, but in this case I will since I've tried a couple brands and the Pillsbury is by far the best. It actually has lard in the ingredients, and as any pie maker will tell you, when it comes to delicious, flaky crust, lard kicks ass.

This recipe features the unusual and exotic Chinese 5-spice powder. Peaches are a natural with the aromatic blend of anise, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns, which usually make up this thousand-year-old spice.

By the way, by watching and mastering this technique, you just learned like 12 different tartlet recipes. This works equally well with apples, pears, plums, etc. Just adjust the caramelizing time based on the density of the fruit so it will be perfectly cooked in the 15 minutes it sits on the tartlet. Enjoy!



Ingredients for 8 tartlets:
2 tbsp butter
3 large peaches, halved, pitted, each half cut into 4 pieces (24 slices total)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp Chinese 5-spice
1 box (15-oz) ready-to-use piecrust (2 sheets)
1 egg, beaten plus 1 tsp water

How To Make Pie and Tart Crust: