Also, I only recently learned that most puff pastry sold at the grocery store is naturally vegan (hooray!), which explains my recent infatuation. While I deeply admire the art of traditional pie-and pastry-making, most days, I do not have the patience (or sadly, the time) to mix dough from scratch, wait for it to rise, roll it out, wait for it to chill, and roll it out again. Did I miss a step? Store-bought puff pastry is not only ridiculously easy to work with, but it also means you can serve up an elegant and delicious dessert in less than an hour, making it the perfect, low-stress dessert to make for a dinner party. Your guests will be wowed and assume you spent hours slaving away in the kitchen (even though I know you used those extra three hours to binge watch reruns of The Office and stalk your ex on Instagram). Now that I’ve professed my love for puff pastry, let’s move on to the filling, shall we? The filling mimics the sweet yet tangy flavor of cheesecake (without any of the dairy) and is simply irresistible. I highly recommend using the Tofutti brand of dairy-free cream cheese, as it has the most authentic cream cheese flavor. Be sure to remove your cream cheese from the refrigerator about 30 minutes before using it to soften it. Otherwise, you’ll end up with cold blocks of unspreadable cream cheese that will inevitably break your pastry dough. While this is a peaches and cream tart, if peaches are no longer in season where you live, you can easily customize this tart based on the seasons. Sliced plums would be fabulous, as would apples or pears. The same goes for the blueberries. You can substitute any berry you like or omit them altogether if they’re not available. If you want to use frozen berries, be sure to thaw them and remove all of the excess liquid. There’s really not much to say about this tart except that it’s the perfect combination of flaky, buttery, cheesy, creamy, and sweet, so you should really make it.
Big Vegan Flavor
Techniques and 150 recipes to master vegan cooking.
