We’ve all been there.. Its been entirely too long since you’ve gone to the grocery store, and you feel like there is no food left in the house, but you’ve got plenty of “stuff” hanging out in your cupboards and fridge.

Yeah, that was me this morning.

I wanted to make something for the blog, but I didn’t feel like walking to the store just to buy stuff when I’ve got plenty of random “stuff” all over my kitchen, I just have to get creative and put it all together.

Starting out with pantry goods, I gathered the makings of a standard pie crust- Sugar, Flour, Shortening.

Should I make a chocolate filling? I grabbed the chocolate chips.

Onto the fridge,  Scrapping the shortening, I grab a stick of butter. A brick of cream cheese, milk, Those pecans I’ve been snacking on for the past month, and a jar of caramel sauce I made the week before last for the ice cream I made but was unable to post about due to its mysterious disappearance when my husband came home early from work. *raises eyebrow* yeah, I think we all knoneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comw what happened there.

Anyways, I gathered all these components, plus a lemon, and a visit to the spice rack added cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

I had originally set out to make one tart, but whats the point in making one tart shell? Then I decided it would be fun to see if I could make a few different tarts all with the same ingredients.

And this is how I ended up with today’s entry-

First, I made enough dough for three tart shells, and baked them.  Then I separated the main ingredients into three parts-

One tart, three ways- all leftovers.

I started off easy, mixing a portion of the cream cheese with cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar to make a sort of cheesecake cream, topping that off with caramel and chocolate dipped raw pecans-

Then I mixed some of the caramel in with some of the leftover cream cheese, added a little ginger and sugar, topped it off with crumbled oven toasted pecans and drizzled it with caramel and chocolate-

The third tart looks the best to me…
After pouring about a tablespoon of caramel into the bottom of the remaining tart shell, I mixed some of the chocolate in with the remaining cream cheese and a pinch of cinnamon, spooned it on top of the caramel and topped it off with the remaining melted chocolate and a raw pecan.

While I definitely don’t have the stomach to eat all three of these tarts, I did taste the first one, and boy was it good!

So today I do believe I had myself a pretty good kitchen adventure. Only now, I really do have to get to the store if I’m to have any future kitchen adventures, as I do believe I’ve used up all of my “stuff” other than sugar and flour, which I seem to have pounds and pounds of.

As for other things, I do believe I’ll be making the most of this beautiful summer afternoon we’re having here in the Northwest, I’m gonna grab my husband right after work and head to a park to make grass angels!

I finally got around to posting about the tarts I made!

So, earlier in the week I decided to make a quick and tasty little dessert out of the little bits of “stuff” in my kitchen.

I gathered-

1 brick of cream cheese
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup homemade caramel sauce (I’ve posted the recipe many times, or you could use store bought)
cinnamon
grated ginger
grated nutmeg

Flour
Sugar
Butter

pecans

From there, I decided to make three different tarts.

First, I started with a basic pie crust. I baked them and allowed them to cool while I mixed up the fillings.

All of the tarts have the same cream cheese base. The chocolate covered one has melted chocolate whipped into it, and both of the others have grated nutmeg and cinnamon whipped in, with the crumbly topped one having the addition of grated ginger.

I mixed all of the ingredients to taste. I really don’t have any idea how much of each thing I mixed in, other than I know that the spices were all less than half a teaspoon.

Each tart is topped in some way with pecans. I love pecans.

Basically, I’m posting this to encourage you all to try something adventurous. Make something without a recipe, and just have faith that it will taste delicious, because it probably will.

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:08 am and is filed under August 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.