Strawberry Orange Tart and Pizza

My brother is an interesting character. Like myself, he loves to cook as well. Late in the date yesterday he pops me a note to say that a few of my cousins are headed into town wanted to know if I wanted to hang. Of course I do and ask my bro what they are doing... he replies with "Um, we're not sure yet..." So I offer to make everyone dinner and dessert if they come to my house.

He was game. He is also trying to master his pizza recipe as well and brought over some fixings and a pizza stone. I don't have the recipe for that yet but I'm thinking he may need to do a guest post once he finalizes it. Either way, the pizza stone is in my oven until he comes to get it again and I'm pretty happy about that. YAY!

While he was making pizza, I made a tart-thingy. I really wanted to make Strawberry Rhubarb pie but it's about a week too early for rhubarb to strawberry orange was the next best thing.

I'll warn you now - the taste is delightful but the recipe is a little soupy...

Ingredients:
2 packages of strawberries
1 orange
1/2 cup sugar
3 tsp cinnamon
1/8 cup flour
1 pad butter
1 sheet of pastry dough (or you could use pie crust)

Steps:

• Take one package of strawberries and chop them up into bit-sized chunks. Not too small otherwise they get super mushy
• Cut off the rind and cut up the orange into bit-sized chunks. Save some of the rind so you can zest it - only about 1 tsp worth - you only are going to use about 1/2 to 3/4 of it. The orange brings out the flavor of the strawberries
• Add about 1/8 cup of water and 1/8 cup of suger to a sauce pan and heat that up to make a little simple syrup
• Add the cut-up strawberries, oranges and zest to the pan and cook it till it gets a little juicy - slowly - about 7 or 8 minutes
• Add in the pad of butter and the flour to thicken the sauce and let it cook again for another 5 to 8 minutes - just before the fruit gets too mushy
• Slice up the other package of strawberries so they are lengthwise - see the photo and lay them on top of the mushy fruit mixture - do one layer at a time then sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar then layer the next set of strawberries on top of that. 

• In the meantime, prep your pastry dough into a pan - I used a pie pan and trim the edges. We used the trimmings to make a little design on the top

• Pour the filling into the pan and bake the mixture for about 15 - 20 minutes till the pastry dough is cooke
• EAT! It's messy but so tasty - we topped it with a little cookie dough ice cream. Yum.