Question first...would a more rustic crostata/galette work for you? Peach crostata is a favorite this time of year. I often add in some raspberries or blueberries, but just peaches are great. For the crust, I like to use Ina Garten's all-butter version from her Apple Crostata recipe. Crazy easy and so good. FWIW, Ina's Apple Crostata recipe is really good. Can't begin to count how many I've made. It has a yummy crumbled topping so well suited with the Granny Smith apples. Also great with peaches though easier to omit.

Thank-you, Chloebud! I think I want to do a formal tart with arranged fruit since this is going to be the star of the show, but I read Ina's recipe and I think the orange zest is the inspiration I need. You use that, right?

In my imagination, the bit of orange would add the zing I was thinking was missing for boring old apple tart. I would like to get away from cinnamon, but, as I said, I don't want to wing it for this company and go fenugreek (which I think I'd like) or something. Cinnamon is so expected. I think the allspice might go too Christmassy, but if it needs something more than the orange, I could sneak in a little cardamom to add complexity.

Or... Thinking of Summer rather than Christmas... Maybe a hint of caramel flavor in there somewhere, and orange jam or sweet marmalade rather than the traditional apricot preserves. With apples, of course. I think it's going to be too early for tree ripe peaches, and the rocks they have in the store right now are flavorless with apple texture, so I don't have much hope for them.

Yes, the orange zest is key, for sure. I can't tell you how many of those apple crostatas I've made. They are just so darn buttery and good. The caramel you mentioned might be nice. For Ina's crostata recipe, I often add a tablespoon-ish of sugar to the filling with the apples and orange zest. For the crumble topping, I use half brown/half granulated sugar.

I was just thinking...for something more formal Ina has a Fresh Fruit Tart I've made. You can google the recipe if you're interested. You can make it with either just the fruit and a glaze (look for her Raspberry Tart), or a custard filling with pretty fruit arranged on top.

These are some apple crostatas I made several years back in mini pie dishes. Obviously not free from with the pie dishes...but good. Sorry about the Photobucket thing. I used to use it to post pix online. Been having problems finding old photo files on a new laptop. This is the best I could do. I'm so NOT tech saavy!

Those look lovely! Rusticy, but still careful.

I found this recipe when I was searching for something different. I don't know if I like the recipe. I usually find that the "easier" recipes aren't as good as the real deal, which is what I want for special (not talking about rustic's here, just the ones that brag about skipping steps). OTOH, I love the picture. It gives a bit of the over the top look of a tarte tatin with the ease of a simple sliced apple tart.

With your totally on point input, I think I'm firm in the plan now to make a straight up traditional French tart, with pate sucree crust, apple goo, pretty sliced apples (yeah, mandolin for uniform cuts!), and glaze of thinned preserves (maybe orange), no booze. Orange zest in the apples with cinnamon.

I'm just not sure on the caramel. I think it would go well with a caramel flavor, very State Fair Summer, but I'm not sure how to do it. Maybe make a thin caramel sauce and brush the crust with it. Hm... I like that idea. It would taste with the apple goo, which I want to leave apple-y, with the apples with cinnamon and orange on top.

I wonder if I should try making caramel orange jam? (hee)

Peach or nectarine frangipane. Make it a day ahead if you like. Glaze it with apricot preserves and it will appear jewel-like. It slices neatly.

Martha Stewart has a good recipe. I make it with pate brisee:

https://www.marthastewart.com/339722/rustic-apple-tart

There are also one using purchased puff pastry, but I haven't used it:

https://www.marthastewart.com/341057/rustic-apple-tart

I like to add raisins, cranberries or plums to the apples. Grapes are good too.

Here's my favorite recipe for a fruit tart...Beautiful and very professional looking.....and delicious if your fruit is good.

Dessert Fruit tart

This from Cook's magazine a lot of years ago......none
better!
Fruit tart….9 (or 10) inch tart pan with removeable bottom

Pastry

1 1/2 cups all
purpose flour , 1/4 cup cake flour , 1/4 cup sugar , 1/4 tsp salt ,1/4 pound
chilled butter in cubes 2 egg
yolks....and water if needed.

Mix dry ingredients
and cut in butter until mix resembles peas. Work in the egg yolks....and if
necessary to make a smooth stiff dough, up to 3T of water. Form into ball,
cover and chill 30 minutes. Roll dough slightly larger than tart pan.....fit
into pan and roll the pin over the edges of the pan to cut off excess
dough....Chill at least 5 minutes....or over night. Fill with buttered foil,
weight with pie weights or beans and bake 10 minutes at 375, remove weights and
foil and bake another 10 minutes at 350.

Pastry cream ,2 1/2 T. flour , 1/4 cup sugar , pinch of salt
, 3 egg yolks , 1 cup milk , 1 tsp vanilla , 1 1/2 T eau d'vie...or liquor that
blends well with the fruit you are going to use. 2 tsp butter.

Mix sugar and salt in
a heavy pan,beat in egg yolks, gradually whisk in milk, cook and whisk over low
heat until bubbles break surface.....boil 1 minute stirring constantly. Remove
from heat and stir in vanilla and liquor. lay plastic wrap on the surface of
the cream and chill.

Glaze 1 cup of
apricot or peach preserves or red currant jelly and 1 T water.... Heat until jelly is melted. Put pastry into
shell, cut up fresh fruit of your choice ( strawberries, raspberries, peaches,
apricots, kiwi....or a mixture.) Brush with glaze,chill and serve

}

"...I think I'm firm in the plan now to make a straight up traditional French tart, with pate sucree crust, apple goo, pretty sliced apples (yeah, mandolin for uniform cuts!), and glaze of thinned preserves (maybe orange), no booze. Orange zest in the apples with cinnamon."

Sounds like a good plan!

Sounds like the recipe I posted but with the addition of pastry cream.

Martha Scott has a tonne of tart recipes she has shared here on the CF ....

search for 'tart' and look for Martha

here's one: Indiv. pear tart

There's just something about tarts that guests are always happy to see...fancy or rustic. Just fun to make and serve them.

Dirty secret? I don't really care for most tarts. I loved the holiday fruit tart that my mother got from the Swiss bakery every year, which was all kinds of fruit slices in a puff shell on pastry cream and with glaze. Very classic, but not common here (though versions are now). The Swiss bakery had the ne plus ultra, and I think what I loved most was the custard. :) I love custard.

This birthday girl, however, doesn't care much for sweets and certainly doesn't want a cake, but she likes the fruitiness of a nice tart.

Linda, your recipe looks excellent. I like Lisa's suggestion of frangipane for peach, too. Can't go wrong pairing peaches and almonds.

Chloebud's recipe suggestion in the first comment made me figure out my answer for brightening up the classic recipe. I'm sorry if anyone was put out by adding further suggestions--there's no way to put a "problem solved" in the title or even top post.

The one thing I'm not clear on is whether to caramel or not to caramel....

plllog, I'm a caramel fan and think it sounds great. Do you have an idea if the birthday girl is a fan? Apple tarts (or pies) are pretty darn tasty (and pretty!) with a drizzle of caramel on top.

Now you've got me wanting some Granny Smith slices and caramel to dip them in. :-)

This birthday girl isn't good at imagining flavors, or I'd ask her, but I like your suggestion of a drizzle of caramel sauce. It seems pretty obvious, but it didn't occur to me as a way of adding the caramel flavor. There's a lovely little pitcher set there that's the perfect size for caramel sauce, and the saucer will keep drips off the tablecloth. I'll be cutting the tart and serving at the table, so I can just drizzle to order on each slice (or on the side), then pass the pitcher around for those who want control.

Chloebud, you're the savior of this whole project. I've been so stuck on this tart, and you have such clarity of thought! Thank-you!

You're sweet...thanks! That little pitcher and saucer sound just perfect. It's also so nice of you to put so much thought into this for the birthday girl.

My favorite tart is puff pastry layered with ricotta mixed with goat cheese, thinly sliced apples or pears, walnuts, rosemary and after baking, honey.

I make it often and it's always extremely well received. Sometimes I only use goat cheese and I like that too.

This is delicious, but doesn't contain fresh fruit. You could top with dollops of whipped cream and fresh berries.

Lemon Tart with Chocolate Almond Crust

So TJ's had a 4 lb. box of peaches, ripe to nearly ripe (shock!) for ... I forget ... $6? So the not quite ripe ones are sitting on the counter. There are still a couple of weeks until birthday tart, but I'm thinking of trying out the pate scuree recipe and Lisa's suggestion of frangipane and peaches. I think it should freeze well. I have perfect containers for a quarter of a pie (or tart).

I'm so glad to have all these excuses to bake! It wasn't that long ago I was sad for having no reason to bake. :)

I did my prover of the crust. It looks and smells good. I'm only worried that I rolled it too thin. I don't like thick tarts, but with the crust being so brittle, thicker is safer. I had enough over to do a tartlet and even an almost second tartlet. I'm going to try the pastry cream recipe for the princess cake, as another proof, and put it in the tartlets with berries as a treat for Sunday.

Here's a picture of the frangipane tart with peaches. I didn't have nearly enough sleep last night and when the second nearly ripe peach cracked, I said forget beauty, sliced what I'd already pealed, and just dumped them on top. It's still cooling. We'll eat it tomorrow.

Nicely done! :-)

BTW, we're on our third box of those California peaches from TJ's. All good...so far.

We haven't bought any TJ's peaches this year. Was hoping to see the Autumn Flames, but the boxes at our TJ's no longer state variety.

Andie, the white sticker on the end of our current box says "Summer Flame."

Chloebud, that's getting close. ;) I'll have to take a good look next visit.

It probably differs depending on your location. Our box also has "SunWest" and "Premium California Tree Fruit".

SunWest is the grower. They grow other things besides peaches, so it's probably a generic box. The bar code label that says Summer Flare 26 is telling you the variety. I don't know about the 26. That could be a cultivar code or the orchard or packing house or what have you.

So the proof of the pudding is in the eating. :) The pate sucree is excellent. Maybe a tad too sweet, but I wouldn't want to make the edges slump by not having enough sugar, especially while it's hot out, so I doubt I'll scant it. I was worried about the structure, and it's good and firm, even rolled thin. I did just wrap it and throw it into the fridge tin and all, being so tired last night. That meant that the bottom kind of suctioned to the tart and I had to loosen it with a thin blade. I ended up manhandling it too much because I was too lazy to walk over and get a long spatula. No. Actually, I didn't want to use a big knife and didn't think of the spatula until after I decided to just go for it. But I could have put it down and thought it through, so lazy. No harm. I pried the bottom off without harming the tart at all. It's very firm. A little hard when cut cold, but cut through with my thin little knife, no sawing. The crust is a winner.

I used the frangipane tart recipe because I wanted one which would hold up to the fruit. This meant to be a frangipane tart with fruit decor, which is what I made in the end. I'm glad I did. I liked the top, bubbly and browned part better than the ordinary frangipane filling. It was too sweet and too almondy. One couldn't discern the flavor of the peaches. They started out tasty. I ate the scraps, so I know. :) I also didn't like the texture of the filling underneath much. I think something like bear claw filling would be better with the peaches. More buttery, less almondy, and definitely not with a sweet crust, and with a full blanket of peaches. The frangipane was good in many ways, however, and I might use it in another application.

Great feedback, plllog. I'd also have a problem with "too sweet and too almondy," but I've never been a bog fan of almond flavoring. Good to know you got the tart bottom off without any problem. Love when that happens!

Gonna buy more peaches at TJ's tomorrow. :-)

Yeah, but it comes by it naturally, since it's mostly almond flour. :) I actually like the flavor of almonds, but it can be overpowering. Going back to Lisaam's original suggestion, I've been thinking... If I wanted to use frangipane for the filling, if I used half a recipe, and baked it until browned, then topped it with overlapping peach slices, as usual, and the apricot glaze (I happen to have a jar of extremely fine apricot preserves in the pantry, which I know will be better than my own attempt, so tradition wins out, boughten), this might be very nice. A very birds of a feather tart. :)

I'll eat almonds but don't like almond flavoring. It can definitely be overdone.

Marzipan usually calls for almond extract. That's what gives it the boozy flavor as well. Frangipane generally relies on the almond flour to do the talking, though people have been known to meddle. :) I was talking about bear claws with an offline friend. I'm not much into yeast pastries that are only good for enticing spread of the hips, so I'd forgotten the filling, and looked it up. It's in the same family, but more butter, less almond.

More butter and less almond could work for me. I've had frangipane I liked made with almond flour and vanilla (vs almond) extract. Never been a fan of marzipan. Thinking about it kind of makes my head spin.

I made a half recipe of the pastry cream. It was more like vanilla pudding than creme anglaise. At first I thought it was too sweet, but that may have just been my tongue rebelling. After it chilled it seemed fine. It's good pudding. I was going to make a peach tart with it, but got bogged down looking at alternate recipes, then decided I should just try the original recipe with 25% less sugar. But then I'd forgotten how long cooling would take, being mor focused on the dough chill times. So here's what happened:

Blueberry tartlet in a shell made the other dray from overs, pastry cream, traditional apricot glaze (I didn't make quite enough and it thicked back up as I was applying it. Note to self.

Tonight's dessert was rounds of a small egg rising cake that didn't rise right. I think it was the weird pan I wouldn't use but for the sixe. I wasn't thinking straight. So I cut circles, layered with pastry cream, peach round and whipped crame. My friend had just been saying how she liked it almost to the point of butter. I achieved that, but can't say I'm a total fan. It tastes totally like whipped cram, but is clotty like the beginnings of butter. I like peaks, but not so much the nearly butter. It's fun to play with, however. For reference, they're plated on saucers.

The light, thin pastry of the tart was cuttable with crumbs, but didn't crumble, the pastry cream was perfect with the slight tartness of the berries. It was really lovely to eat. The other was Peach and the Band. :)