Also known in some circles as a Fruit Pizza and because it has fruit — it’s healthy! Huzzah!

I made these tonight and they were very good. I think I saw this concept originally in a Seventeen magazine in the 1980’s. Hee! I’m old.

As these were small and cookie-sized (as opposed to big, pizza-sized), I prefer the petit moniker of tartlet.

Ingredients:

Sugar Cookie Recipe or Lazy-Lazy Cookie Dough in a Tube
Cream Cheese
Orange Liqueur
Sugar
Fruit of some kind (blackberries, boysenberries, blueberries, strawberries, etc.)
Orange Marmalade
Mint sprigs

What I did with above ingredients:

I sort of threw them all together from memory and instead of making one big sugar cookie, I went ahead and made smaller ones — hence the tartlets. I also cheated and used the sugar cookie dough in a tube. Just like Sandra Lee. Except, that I didn’t use a seasoning packet or some hideous kind of extract to give it that homemade taste, just so that I could lie to everyone about how I slaved away in the kitchen all day and “take all the credit”.

Erm…anyway, while the cookies cooled on a wire rack, I got the cream cheese mixture together. This entailed using about 1/3 of a block of cream cheese, a tablespoon or so of orange liqueur and a tablespoon or so of sugar. After a quick taste I added a bit more liqueur and sugar, tasted again, exclaimed “mmmmm,” and then popped the bowl in the fridge so it would chill.

A half hour later…
Berries were then washed, patted dry and cut in half (the blackberries were huge!) and the mint was chiffonaded*. I went out to the garden and found about six strawberries to add to the mix. After spreading the cream cheese mixture on the cookie tops, I placed the berries in a –hopefully– artful arrangement.

Then, I remembered reading in the original Seventeen article, to use melted apricot jam as a glaze, so that the fruit would stay nice and fresh looking. I looked in the fridge. We always seem to get those little jams from Swiss Colony at Christmas from one of my relatives, but for once, I couldn’t find any. We did have orange marmalade, though. Close enough! I popped a small dish of that in the microwave for about 30 seconds and brushed that on the tops of the berries. It actually seemed to work just fine. Then I sprinkled the tartlets with mint.

We ate all 6 of them — they were small! Tiny, really. Can you even see them? Squint.

I think if I lived in Deadwood, I would open a little restaurant instead of a whorehouse.

* Chiffonade. Take a few leaves and roll them up together vertically, so that you have a short, tight, little cylinder of mint. Slice the mint up so that when they unravel, you have all these little strips. Rachael Ray can be annoying, but she can give some really good tips too.

edited again 8/19/07
edited 2/23/06

Je Mange la Ville is mlb — me, also known as michelle. I live in the Hawthorne area of Portland, Oregon with the boyfriend finacee fiancee jwa and two cats, Chelsea & Spencer. I just turned 37 (Feb 2006), which kind of freaks me out.

When I was growing up, my mom and I would watch Julia Child and The Frugal Gourmet on the weekends on PBS. I blame all of them for my cooking exploits.

The blog itself actually came about in a funny way. I was job hunting and had an interview at Stash Tea to be their Web site manager. One of the questions that I was asked is if I had a blog. “Well, no…” I answered then thought to myself — Hey! Why don’t I have a blog?? That night, I came home and asked jwa all about how one would set up a blog. I was playing around with blogger.com and he was all, no, no, no, you need something that I will have to program — ’cause he’s like that.

Hands off ladies, he’s all mine!

Anyway, a few days later he came back with the wordpress and the rest, as they say, is history.

I didn’t get the job at Stash (wah!) I did, in fact, get a job there in August, 07 — and I did also gain this fun little blog. The title means “I eat the city” in French. I had four years of high school French and two years at the University of Minnesota. With all of that education, I can just barely cobble together sentences that a three-year old might say. I am proud and try to use this skill whenever possible.

I currently work at a local non-profit (not food, art or environment related) where my title is Development Manager. I manage the fundraising database, plan events, produce the newsletter, ask restaurants for free meals, ask donors for $$ and generally do a bit of everything — including cooking dinner at Major Donor Dinners. Yikes.

We’ve lived in Portland since 2000 and it seems that the list of restaurants we want to try is still a mile long. I’d like to use this blog as an incentive to work through that list and review some of the new places we try — as well as revisit some of our favorite places to eat.

Prior to living in Portland, some of my favorite restaurants have included Aqui Grill (duck burrito!) and Flea Street Cafe (uhhh…anything!) in the California Bay Area, La Bellavia (cafe aloha and a tasty egg dish) in Flagstaff, AZ and Mill Race Inn (really good coffee) and Fond de la Tour (assorted French things I don’t recall by name) in the suburbs of Chicago. I suggest if you live near any of these places you go eat there now.

Oh yeah and I’d also like to talk about recipes I’ve tried, cooking shows, kitchen gadgets, Portland in general, our house in the SE, possibly things relating to my time in Northern California, Arizona or growing up in Chicago, and whatever else I might think up to discuss.

But back to the original matter at hand, Portland is just crazy with the tasty eating establishments. And lucky for me, jwa likes a good meal too. And pie. Or so I’ve heard. Could be a nasty rumor though…

You can e-mail me at mlb at jemangelaville dot com if you’d like and I really will try to respond but sometimes I’m awfully lazy…

The fine print…
A note on restaurant reviews and recipes — I like all the recipes and restaurants that I post about. I don’t post about recipes that sucked or restaurants that I didn’t like. There are other Portland food blogs and message boards that have wonderful, critical and very informative restaurant reviews. If that’s what you are looking for, go there. I just like to cook, eat and take pictures of it all. That’s all.

As far as recipes go, most the recipes I post about are not my own — they’ve come from a cookbook, TV show or the Web. I will always cite my source. If you like the recipe — awesome. I’m really happy I helped you find a new favorite and I love, love, love reader’s comments. If it didn’t work out I’m really sorry and happy to offer any advice I can give. I’m also open to polite comments that discuss what in the recipe didn’t work out.

That said, if it didn’t work out or you just don’t like the recipe, that’s fine but please don’t leave a snotty comment to that effect. This is not a democracy and I will either delete or not approve mean, dumbass, troll-like or otherwise rude comments. If you don’t like that policy, start your own blog. Sheesh!