Since She Asked...

Yesterday was a fun day. It was Mike and Beatriz's last full day here in Oregon and we (Josh and I) stole them away for the afternoon and took them to lunch. We didn't even have to bring the kids! We were able to have a nice time and good conversation. Mike and his family moved away to Georgia about 3 months after Bryce was born, so I have never had much opportunity to spend any time with him. Also since there's such a big age difference (6 years) between Mike and Josh, they weren't very close growing up either. So it was really nice for both Josh and I to be able to take some time, just the 4 of us to talk about life and marriage and everything else without anyone else around. So that was great.


Last night the whole McKenney family went over to my in-laws house for a BBQ for one last get together. Josh didn't even bring his camera, so to see pictures, again, you can go to Allison's blog.

My main reason for this post however is to satisfy Allison's desire and post the recipe for the dessert that I made last night. When us girls had a girls' night on Wed night we went to Papa Haydn's in Portland and I had a raspberry tart. It was so good that I decided that I wanted to emulate it for the next night. So this recipe is one from my family cookbook, but I altered it slightly.

So here's my raspberry tart recipe:

Crust:
1 cup flour
1 1/4 sticks butter (definitely not low calorie)
2 Tb sugar (You can add more if you'd like it to be sweeter)

Mix together and spread into a (9x13) casserole dish. *Now, I used a circle pizza pan and I tripled this recipe...It really depends on how thick you want your crust* Bake @ 325 for 15-20 minutes..since I tripled the recipe I baked it for a lot longer than this. Bake until it's firm and golden brown. It's really important to make sure that this is baked thoroughly..otherwise the toppings will soak in and make it fall apart. A little over baked is better than under baked.

Filling:
8oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 small carton cool whip

Mix together and spread over totally cooled crust.

Topping:
Raspberries and glaze.

This is the part where you can be a little creative..and of course you can use whatever berries you wish. If I had it to do over again what I would do is to get a ton of raspberries and hand place them solidly over the entire filling and then pour the glaze over the top. What I did last night was mix the whole raspberries with the glaze and spread it all over the filling.

Glaze:
Approximately 1 cup of raspberries smooshed in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil with about 2/3 cup water. Mix 1/3 cup water with 2 Tb cornstarch. After the berries are boiling add in the cornstarch mixture along with sugar to taste..approx 1/3 cup. Return to a boil until it starts getting nice and thick like gravy.

Allow the whole thing to chill for approx 2 hours or so to get nice and cold. You can also garnish with whipped cream. I put a decorative edge of whipped cream around the edge of the pan to keep the filling in place..but if you use a casserole dish, you wouldn't need to do that.

Soooo good! A perfect summer dessert!