It’s nearly the end of the month and I’m three recipes away from completing this month’s Cooking The Books challenge from A Passion For Baking.  I needed to bake a recipe from the Pastry chapter as well as one from the Desserts and the Celebration Cakes chapters before Monday 31st March. With only two days to go I’d not been very organised this month.

For the Pastry chapter recipe I had chosen the Onion and Port Salut Tart.  When deciding on a recipe to bake it has to be one my family will eat and one that will fit in around what we’re doing and if I have time to make it in the first place!  I originally wanted to make it on Saturday this week but I never got round to it.  In the end I ended up in York eating in Wagamama with my hubby and son!  In the end the tart became my Mother’s Day lunch!

So, late this morning after I’d realised the time due to the clocks going forward, I thought I’d better get my skates on and produce something for lunch.  Only I realised I’d planned to make Eton Mess with meringues so Sunday lunch became a very late lunch/ early tea! When I first saw this recipe I knew that an onion and cheese tart would be fine with my family, only I couldn’t find Port Salut in my local Sainsburys the other day.  I wasn’t even sure what sort of cheese Port Salut was, doesn’t that sound stupid?  It sounded like a French cheese to me but I wasn’t sure what I could use as a substitute.  In the end I bought a piece of Emmenthal cheese as I have used it before in a quiche and it worked really well.

So here is how I made this delectable tart:

At this stage I was meant to take the beans out of the pastry case and give it another five minutes or so in the oven baking blind.  Only, I didn’t read the recipe carefully enough as I was trying to sort out some laundry in the meantime. I know I can multitask but not today, I hoped and prayed my tart wouldn’t have a soggy bottom. Snigger, snigger!

I have to say this is one of the nicest recipes I’ve worked with. Nothing faffy or over complicated and it went down well with my family. We sat down to eat it finally at 5pm once my daughter had finished work.  It was delicious with a jacket potato and veg though I think it would be lovely with new potatoes and salad too.  We ate half the tart, there’s plenty left over for tomorrow night. Well that saves me cooking again, I suppose!

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx