Oh Martha Stewart, how I love to love and hate you!

My sister Karen for my birthday gave me the newest Martha Stewart cookbook, New Pies and Tarts. While I admire the how Martha inspires one to be a domestic goddess, when you roll up your sleeves to conquer one of her activities it always drives me a little batty. The fact that I even have to say “conquer” tells you that being a Martha goddess isn’t easy. 

For example, for a recent event I thought I would try out the Thin Pear Tart recipe. It seemed simple enough. The thing I didn’t count on is that I’ve never made a crust with cream cheese. When I made the crust I wasn’t sure if this very soft, goopy mess I had made was going to turn into any kind of crust. Now to be fair, the instructions say “(Dough will be sticky.)” but talk about understatement of the year.

Despite slightly unhelpful advice from Mr. F, I decided after making the dough a second time with basically the same result – it must be fine. The rest of the recipe was a breeze and the tarts came out looking more or less like the picture. Oh, and they were scrumptious.

 So just when I wanted to really hate Martha, I couldn’t.