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My fruit tart wannabe topped with strawberries and bananas. I'm not totally satisfied with the fruit tarts found in stores and had one of those cravings which manifested another cooking experiment in my mind.
When I look at fruit tarts made in the stores, I expect it to taste custard like, soft of like creme brulee. But instead, it tastes like processed pudding filling, topped with sugar coated fruit, in a buttery thick crust... screaming a heart attack. There's something addicting about it. I don't like instant pudding in the box, or pre-made processed pudding in plastic, which I recently found out has tons of ingredients, that I don't even understand, so it can't be healthy. However, I the home made pudding experiment I made in the past, with at most 3-5 basic ingredients, were really tasty (and a party hit).. along with crushed gram crackers and banana slices.
A lot of the recipes online are more complicated (for cooking experts) and time consuming; I wanted something quick and yummy. So I skimmed through several recipes online to pick out the common ingredients in pudding and the best combo and "mixed" them my head, to create my own simple recipe.
I picked, eggs, milk, flour, sugar, baking soda/powder and almond, coconut or banana flavor extract. I didn't have flour left, but had pancake mix. Looking in the pancake mix ingredients, it already has some sugar, salt, baking powder, so I reduced the amount of sugar about two scoops (1/4-1/3 cup), two eggs, 2-4 cups of water to "dissolve" about 1-1 1/2 cup of flour. I can't remember the exact proportions, but mix it ahead of time then heat to a slight boil, frequently mixing until the batter becomes thick, like pudding. It might be very liquidy at first, but eventually it thickens.
When the pudding is done, pour it on chocolate gram cracker (or regular) crust, premade or homemade. Let cool. To make it more flavorful, I recommend also chopping ripe bananas in smaller pieces, and mixing it into the batter first. Then top with sliced ripe strawberries and bananas. Ripe strawberries are red and sweet; ripe bananas are when the skin has black specks.
Then refridgerate it until cold and chilled. The pudding will thicken to more of a pie/gelatin filling. (To speed up the chilling process, you can put it in freezer for half hour, but make sure it doesn't freeze, unless you want a frozen treat, which someone I met, mentioned his family does). I don't know what the professionals use to glaze the fruit; I'm guessing it's some sugary glaze. A healthy alternative I was going to try was to glaze with knox's unflavored/colored gelatin. When refrigerated, I would think it would solidify with shinyness.
Vegetarians and Vegans:
If you want to go vegetarian, a vegan friend of mine, substitutes eggs with mashed bananas. I don't know how it tastes, but considering bananas are already involved, the pudding would probably taste more banana like and less egg custard like. If you want to go vegan, I think you can substitute milk with a rice milk or soy milk, although I don't know if that would taste good because I don't like the taste of rice milk or soy milk, so it comes down to a matter of preference. Substitute the gelatin glaze for some sort of sugar or jam glaze I guess.. Vegans don't eat gelatin products because it is may be made out of fish bones or other non-vegetarian calcium source.
Enjoy!
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