Comical Take on Family Involvement: Mixed Berry Tart

Almond flour crust with mixed berries sweetened with Truvia

This low carb diet has become such a strong part of my family that both of my kids wanted to be involved in the making of the blackberry tart aka Mixed Berry Tart.  So, we decided to film it.   It's pretty comical because my son, the camera man is a bit of a funny man himself.  Even when he tries really hard to do something nice for mom, that urge to do something else is just too strong.   I certainly have my own moments of epic fail, but it's too funny not to share with you.

Enjoy the clips below, but be sure to come back for what sweetener was best in the taste test!

Here's our first take:How NOT to Make Tart Crust

A more successful take but my camera man is losing interest: Successful Tart Crust with Bored Camera Boy

The last bit of useful video: Pressing Out the Almond Flour Tart Crust

If you watched the videos, you know one of the goals of making the tarts was to try three sweeteners.  However, I found two, were actually the same stuff, so it came down to a comparison of monk fruit or stevia.  I made the mini tarts with monk fruit and the large tart with stevia.

Almond Flour Tart Crust
For the recipe of the almond flour crust, I used one that I found online here: Elana's Pantry's Gluten Free Tart Crust  This crust was so excellent, I will have to start following Elana's recipes.  Her recipes appear to be Paleo diet based.

She didn't provide baking instructions, but I baked the crust before I filled at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.  I didn't like the oil sitting on top of the crust, so I did soak it up with paper towels, but the oil does soak back into the crust, so you don't have to do that.

The Carbometer on the Crust per serving is: 5 carbs
Use flour and it would have been 23 carbs

The coconut oil used to make the crust spelled so wonderful, it was like my kitchen was on a tropical vacation.

Mixed Berry Filling
The mixed berry recipe is a conglomeration of recipes from all over the place.  I didn't want jello in the tart mix, or more eggs...I just wanted berries and sugar for the most part.   I ended up using for the most part the filling from a Martha Stewart Cobbler recipe which for what I had was this:

5 cups of mixed berries -  Raspberries, Blueberries and Blackberries (mainly blackberries)
4 tsp. of sweetener
2 tbsp. of cornstarch.

You just sprinkle the sweetener and cornstarch over the berries and mix it up, making a little berry sauce. Then fill the tarts.  I baked the tart and mini tart for another 20 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees and let sit and cool for 30 minutes.

Mini Tarts made with Nectresse sweetener

Carbometer on the berry filling for 1 pie: 9 carbs

Total Carbometer on a piece of this lovely mixed berry tart:  14 carbs

Carbometer on 1 mini tart: 4.5 carbs

Sweetener taste test:  I had 5 people test both a mini tart and small piece of the large tart.  The crust on the mini was awesome, more crust per bite.  The fruit mix on first taste was awesome but then the sweetener aftertaste lingers for a while. The mini tarts were made with Nectresse sweetener with monk fruit.

The large tarts taste was good and stayed good consistently.  The testers asked for a thicker crust...some true sweet tooth testers could still taste the fact that it wasn't sugar, but they ate all of their tart anyway.  The large tart was made with Truvia and that's the TRUE winner of the sweetener taste test and what I'll be using until I find something better.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  It was fun to involve the kids.  Here's a look at the mini tarts: