Figgy Flop-Tart

You wouldn't know it from looking at the (pretty luscious) photos, but this fig & plum tart was a complete and utter failure. So much so that Suzanne and I could barely get through a slice apiece, even in the name of research.

 The fault is completely mine: I took this recipe, and decided to make a normal pie crust instead of using frozen puff pastry. The pie crust was perfectly good, in theory: I used a variation of Carolyn's classy approach, using all whole-wheat pastry flour. (I've gotten hooked on Bob's Red Mill, mostly because it's cheaper than other brands, high-quality, and local to where I live).

The crust looked pretty good, empty:

(You can tell I was a bit sloppy cutting the butter in by the hugeness of the butter chunks visible above).

This tart is basically plums and figs and sugar, and nothing else. It looked pretty good filled too:

The problem is, the puff pastry called for in the original recipe didn't need more than a few minutes' baking... the pie crust I used did. Consequently I wound up baking the fruit for 40 minutes or so, which led them to bleed juice into the crust, which was still undercooked, wet from the fruit, and bizarrely gooey on bottom. The whole thing was a mess.

Lesson learned: don't drastically modify a recipe without giving at least a moment's consideration to what else might need to change. 

My pie education continues!