Mascarpone is perhaps best known in the U.S. as the base of tiramisu. Yesterday, we used it to whip up some Lemon Mascarpone Tarts.

The Crave family’s recipe makes it easy, by using refrigerated sugar cookie dough instead of mixing up and rolling out pastry dough. It’s a great time-saving tip.

Lemon is one of those flavors that’s delicious in any season—a godsend in the winter during the drought of seasonal fruit, and refreshing on the hottest summer day.

In addition to the cookie dough, all you need are three ingredients: mascarpone, a jar of lemon curd and a garnish of fresh raspberries or blueberries.

This recipe yields 36 mini tarts. For more recipes, visit the CraveCheese.com.

LEMON MASCARPONE TARTS

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Slice cookie dough into discs 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Slice each disc in half. In a greased mini muffin tin, press pieces of cookie dough into each muffin space. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden in color. Set aside to cool completely.

2. Meanwhile, place lemon curd in a microwaveable dish and heat until spreadable. Whisk curd with mascarpone until light and airy.

3. To assemble tarts, use a small cookie scoop to fill each sugar cookie tart with lemon mascarpone filling. Top with a fresh raspberry.

ABOUT CRAVE BROTHERS

Not only do the Crave Brothers produce a family of award-winning artisan cheeses, they do it using 100% green power and practicing water conservation and recycling. In fact, as a carbon-negative company, they produce more power with their bio digester than they use for their dairy and cheese plant.

The Crave family farms 2,000 acres of rich land in south-central Wisconsin, growing soybeans, corn and alfalfa to use as nutritious feed for their Holstein cows. From the manure digester to water recovery, sustainability is top-of-mind on the farm. Every pound of cheese made by George Crave, a licensed cheese maker, is made with milk from the family’s herd. Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese produces Mascarpone, Fresh Mozzarella, Les Frères® and Petit Frère® French-style cheeses, Farmer’s Rope® Part-Skim Mozzarella String Cheese and Oaxaca.
MORE MASCARPONE

Santé Pecans. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE
NIBBLE.

Santé Nuts sent us packages of snack nuts in nine varieties:

 
Even the savory flavors have a touch of sweetness. The nuts are gluten-free and certified kosher by Star-K.

The line was developed by necessity: Sara Tidhar was a single mom in need of an income. Her son urged her to sell the roasted, seasoned nuts she made for the family and she soon found herself with thousands of orders.

Santé, the French word for health, denotes a better-for-you snack. We really like the one-ounce, grab-and-go packages of nutritious nuts as a substitute for candy and cookie snacks. They’re all-natural, very crunchy and fresh-tasting, with just enough cane sugar to satisfy a sweet tooth.

Hand-roasted in small batches, the nuts are made with less oil (canola oil, a monounsaturated, healthy fat), as well. Try them with a fruity wine or beer.

Santé Nuts can be purchased on Amazon.com and on the company website, SanteNuts.com. One-ounce packages are $1.99, four-ounce packages are $5.99.
Toss Into Recipes

The nuts add interest to a salad—green salad, chicken salad, tuna salad, spinach-and-blue-cheese salad—sweet potato casserole, stuffing, whatever. Here are two lively salad recipes to try:

Become a sauce master: Here’s Part 3 of chef Johnny Gnall’s tutorial on the secondary sauces. Start at the beginning with:

 
If you have questions or suggestions for other tips, email Chef Johnny.

ESPAGNOLE SAUCE BECOMES DEMI-GLACE

Demi-glace (pronounced DEH-me GLAHS) is a rich brown sauce that is often served with beef, lamb and pork. The term comes from the French word glace, which means icing or glaze (among other things, including ice and ice cream); demi means half. Demi-glace is thicker and contains more gelatin than espagnole alone, so it has more body.

Marchand De Vin Sauce

A variation of demi-glace is sauce marchand de vin (marchand de vin is French for wine merchant), which, not surprisingly, includes wine.

 
You now have a sauce that is perfect for pretty much any meat you can cook up!

Beyond the myriad classic sauces that stem from espagnole sauce, I am always up for some boundary crossing between cuisines—otherwise known as fusion food. I am a big fan of taking this classic French sauce and bringing it down to Mexico.

Mole Sauce

By adding a little cocoa powder and very little chile powder to a quart of espagnole sauce, you turn it into variety of mole sauce.

 
This variation of mole is not precisely the traditional Mexican procedure, but nobody will be complaining.

My mom, who grew up in Mexico, serves her mole sauce with lamb chops and mashed potatoes.

To make the candy, raisins are coated with oil and spun in a hot drum with milk or dark chocolate. They’re then polished to a shine.

Raisinets are the earliest brand on record, introduced by the Blumenthal Brothers Chocolate Company of Philadelphia in 1927 (the brand was acquired by Nestlé in 1984).

We don’t know that the Blumenthals originated the concept. Hard chocolate was invented in 1847, enabling confectioners to develop all types of chocolate candies (the history of chocolate). No doubt, chocolate-dipped fruit was in the repertoire.

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BÉCHAMEL SAUCE BECOMES MORNAY SAUCE

It’s easy to make a robust cheese sauce from a base of creamy, delicate béchamel (BAY-sha-mell) sauce. Just stir the following ingredients into one quart of béchamel (you can substitute the cheese, e.g., if you want a Cheddar cheese sauce).

In addition to saucing proteins, starches and vegetables—and making a superior macaroni and cheese—it’s phenomenal for dipping hot pretzel nuggets at parties: A crowd tends to form around the bowl.

Bacon Béchamel. If you believe, as I do, that bacon makes everything better, you can go big and cook some bacon to add to the béchamel (finely chopped). Or you can whisk in bacon fat that you’ve previously reserved (I always save the drippings when I cook bacon and store them in a small plastic container that I keep on the shelf of my fridge).

Sauce suprême is a very rich sauce that adds cream to chicken velouté. It’s the perfect “luxury” sauce for roast chicken or pork. One chef we know calls it “the most upscale gravy.”

 
Variations

 
There’s one more mother sauce/secondary sauce tip to go: demi-glace.