A perfect dessert for a warm summer's day

This past weekend, it finally felt like summer arrived in London. The weather on Sunday was just absolutely picture perfect with temperatures hitting a balmy 25 degrees. For the first time in a long time, I could comfortably wear a sleeveless top and slip into shorts. It was, weather-wine, definitely the finest day all year, which made it just perfect for this week's TWD pick - La Palette's strawberry tart.

You see, right about this time of year, the supermarket shelves are just bursting with colour from all the in-season fruit. I had no trouble at all finding these gorgeous, juicy strawberries from Kent in my local grocer. The real difficulty was keeping myself from polishing these off before the tart was ready because they just looked so damn good.

The interesting thing about this tart is that instead of a cream or custard-based filling, the shortbread-like pastry crust is simply adorned with a generous layer of strawberry jam, topped with heaping tablespoonfuls of ripe strawberries and finished with a dollop of creme fraiche. This means that the tart is great for when you need to prepare a dessert in advance, such as for a dinner party. Just bake the tart shell the day before, then right before serving slather on the jam, spoon on the strawberries and voila! A picture perfect dessert for the summer.

PS: The TWD-ers have decided that going forward, we will stop posting Dorie's recipes each week. Since there are now so many of us, its almost as if we're giving away the book for free, which is really not our intention.