A few sweets to tempt...and some demi glace

A little story about a tart. My brother was in town for the weekend, babies and wife too. He got up early in the morning on Sunday and pulled out my Rebecca Reilly GF cook book and made a pastry dough and filled with the pear tart. But first he had to drive to the local store and get pears, butter and heavy cream (hum, I always run out of butter when he is in town). The filling is a combo of heavy cream, ground almonds and eggs. Then top it off with sliced pears. When you are finished baking it, top it with apricot jam warmed up with a bit of cognac to make a nice glaze.
Here it is unbaked:


What is note worthy to me is, that he just pulled the book down, rummaged through my GF jars of flour and put it together. No fear. I might have thought about it for days first. Although he did mention that he wanted to bake one since the moment he arrived. I was lucky enough to wake up to something delicious in the oven.



We topped it with the leftover homemade whipped cream that I made for the flourless chocolate cake. This cake is so not cakey and rich. I made a ganache topping. The recipe I used is from epicurious.com and is here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/14478

The camera I used isn't the best, but here's the photo. Mind you the taste is all that mattered.



And one more...
For Valentine's Day I made these for my sweetie and a few friends:

These are little lavender tarts from Gluten Free Girl's lavender tart recipe, http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/2007/02/photo-sharing.html, however, I must have done something wrong, as they wouldn't set up. Could be that I used regular sugar to save a trip to the store. So I froze them. But they had great taste.

While my bro was in town, we made some veal demi glace (GF) so that I would have my own supply for those demi glace emergencies. He is in love with learning all there is to know about the French classics and I, everything ethnic (except using chicken claws - I have to draw the line somewhere). Demi glace is a two day event, but it is so decadent that it might be worth it (when your bro is in town and does most of the work - however he leaves copious amounts of dirty dishes). I now have most of a pint jar of the elixir in my freezer.

i'm out