Tomato Basil Tart
By: Kait Nolan
Published: Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 5:30pm

Ingredients




2/3 rds of a sheet of puff pastry
handful of fresh basil
1 cup of fresh cherry tomatoes
4 ounces ⅓ less fat cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 egg white
fresh ground black pepper

Preparation

1 Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 2 On a floured surface, roll out your puff pastry until it makes a nice large square. 3 Transfer the flattened pastry to a pizza pan (you can use some other kind of pan but the pizza pan is so nice and uniformly round). 4 Take your cream cheese and if it’s already softened, add the garlic powder and mix well.  If you’re like me and don’t have the patience to wait, put it in a bowl and microwave for 15 seconds, then add the garlic powder and mix well. 5 Spread the cream cheese mixture over the center of the puff pastry, leaving about a one inch edge uncovered. 6 Crank a bit of black pepper over the whole thing. 7 Slice the cherry tomatoes in half. 8 Layer the basil leaves (I like them whole, but you can certainly cut them) over the cream cheese mixture. 9 Layer the tomatoes between the basil. 10 Fold up the edges of your tart (we all know I always do rustic here). 11 Brush the top of the pastry with egg white. 12 Bake for 18 minutes.

About


I put a savory twist on things  using some fresh tomatoes and basil from my garden to make this fabulous appetizer.  I really wanted to do this with goat cheese, but they were out when I went to the grocery (for shame!), so I used cream cheese instead.  And the results were–OMG AWESOME!  There was so much NOM NOM NOMING going on at the dinner I took these to that conversation simply stopped for the 3 minutes it took us to inhale it.