Dessert Trio

Okay. Maybe I went just a little overboard with this one. But I had to practice my lemon meringue tarts and as long as I was doing one little pie I might as well do two and just add cocoa to half the dough. And the ice cream was made ahead of time, then I just had to try out my new digital thermometer for tempering the chocolate. And don't they all look so cute on the plate?

I made a little lemon meringue pie. I used my favorite pie crust recipe and replaced some flour with almond meal and ground pecans. I rolled out the crust, cut 3 inch circles, and bakes them in a mini cupcake pan. They were the perfect size.

I made the other little tart using the same pie crust recipe, but this time I replaced some flour with cocoa powder. The filling was a sweet pastry cream with melted chocolate. I covered the filling with a layer of chocolate ganache, then topped the whole thing with some intensely raspberry whipped cream.

And the ice cream! I'm still eating what's left of this right out of the tupperware with a spoon.  I made a vanilla-bean cheesecake ice cream and mixed in some fresh blackberries. The cup the little scoop is sitting in was made with white and dark chocolate and hidden at the bottom of each cup it a fresh blackberry.

One teensy problem: I took these pictures during the afternoon right before the guests arrived and I thought the plate looked quite nice. When it came time to prepare each plate after dinner, however, I had a plating epiphany and started squirting chocolate all over the plate and marbling it fancily. Ergo, these pictures were taken indoors as I was rushing to prevent the ice cream from melting. Although I edited the pictures later to try to adjust the colors, I hope you'll excuse the photos and enjoy the technique.

And no, I'm not ashamed to say despite a day of sampling in the kitchen, my dessert plate was also completely clean.