French coconut tarts and competition
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. In the uber competitive world of church lady bake sales, the rector’s wife set off an explosion.
And Susan Cowperthwaite’s call to rolling pin arms was followed by Leslie Fraser, mother of Charlotte:
Charlotte has crafted three blends of her spice rub. My barbeque sauce is next…ingredients lined up to put that together tomorrow morning, then the pies…a hummingbird cake if I have time, peach cobbler and then I turn the kitchen over to Charlotte for the creation of macarons!
You could practically hear the collective preheating of ovens and clanging of mixing bowls as the rest of us Women of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church hopped to it. I was hoping to slide by on some Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies this year, but now that would not be possible.
The Bake Sale is held in conjunction with the Men of St. Paul’s BBQ every July. The sale used to be so, well, lame. It was an afterthought. A few women baked a couple dozen cookies sold during the BBQ by strolling children with baskets (one year a store-bought cake from the grocery store slipped in, but we don’t talk about those dark times). We made a couple hundred bucks. It was an afterthought because the women also held a bazaar the same day that made thousands of dollars. Cookie money was chump change. Then we moved the bazaar to another month. And all of a sudden, the Bake Sale was front and center. Bragging rights were now involved. Not explicit bragging rights, of course. Good Christian women would never do that. But everyone knows who brings the Salted Caramel Chocolate French Macarons and who brings the sugar cookies with M&Ms (usually me).
So it was a very stressful week. Since I am not a baker I could have just called “foul” but that is not the way of OCD people. And I had one winner already in my hip pocket – my peanut butter, dark chocolate chip and bacon cookies. Ha! Who else is going to make those? And I even went into a crafts store, which I frequent approximately every seven years, for that fancy clear wrapping stuff and raffia string things. And name cards. I’m determined not to go down (here’s the recipe for the cookies).
The other offering was French coconut tarts, mostly because I actually do know how to make pie dough thanks to Crisco (here’s that recipe) and because I love coconut and King Daddy doesn’t, so I figured I’d have to sample a few in a test batch to make sure they were up to St Paul’s standards (after three I determined they were).
So now here is my question: How many peanut butter bacon cookies and coconut tarts equals 10 loaves of banana nut bread, a few pound cakes and a gross of oatmeal cranberry cookies. And how to do you numerically compare barbecue sauce to cookies? I’m not good at math so I have no idea.
- ½ stick butter, melted
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- ⅔ cup sugar
- 1 cup sweetened coconut
- 1 cup whole milk
- Recipe for two single pie crusts or two store-bought crusts
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the butter, eggs, flour, sugar, coconut and milk.
- Roll out the pie crust and cut into six rounds slightly larger than 12 tart pans. Form dough into the tart pans and then fill ⅔ full with the custard. Bake for 40 minutes or until the filling is set. Cool about 15 minutes before removing the tarts from the pans.
Leave a Reply