San Diego Food Bloggers Bake Sale a Huge Success!

Berries are everywhere right now and quite affordable, making it a challenge to walk by them in the market.  This made it easy to decide what I’d make for the recent bake sale San Diego Food Bloggers held in support of Share Our Strength‘s national Great American Bakesale engineered to raise money to help end childhood hunger in America, however.  I’ve made quite the variety of tarts in the last year so knew just which recipe I’d use, then realized when I’d made them previously, strawberries weren’t in the mix and I had 2 lbs. of fresh, gorgeous strawberries to use.


Does anyone bake strawberry tarts?

Well, sure they do, and as usual, I seem to be the last to know.  The strawberry tarts I’m familiar with are those made with whole berries and a super sweet bright red syrup poured over them sitting in a cooked pie shell.  I’ve never understood the attraction being more of a strawberry shortcake kind of person, so never considered making anything like that — unless the tart has a lovely layer of pastry cream covering the shell and is lightly brushed with warm quince jelly.

It seems baked strawberry pies are quite the old fashioned treat — especially for those who keep their own strawberry patches.  The recipe is quite simple, involving the berries, brown sugar, and cinnamon and although I didn’t get to taste one of the finished tarts, I can attest to the quality of the juice produced by that mixture because I did do a bit of slurping from the remnants.  A cook has to taste test, right?

The downside to making the tarts was the larger than my estimates tart pans which produced a mere eight tarts, so I made eight blueberry tarts as well.  But 16 tarts wasn’t enough for my share of promised goods for the bake sale, so I also made some tropical fruit free-form tarts, and some large jam-filled hand pies inspired by these Valentines Day pies.  Is it rude to admit I was over making pie dough by the time the tarts were finished?

All for a great cause, so very worth it!

Huge thanks to Marie of Meandering Eats, our fearless leader and organizer extraordinaire, who recruited and emailed, and orchestrated, and supported us along the way…

Banana Bread made by Bakerita.

Lori of Recipe Girl brought her Baseball Cookies.

Soft chocolate chip cookies from Ashleigh of -Chantilly et Foie and pumpkin treats from Happy Yolks.

…and to the creativity of nearly 30 participants whose baking talents helps us raise more than $1700.  I sold all but one tart and donated what was left of the $20 I brought to purchase my comrades’ goods with.  So many tasty, tasty treats!  We also benefited from the generosity of our gracious hosts at Great News! where we set up.  They tempted those of us on their mailing list with a raffle, to which Wilton also contributed three huge baskets of baking goodies, courtesy of Amanda of The Cilantropist who made the great connection while at Camp Blogaway.  Alas, none of the day’s bakers won the raffle.

Fabulous Peanut Butter Chocolate Krisp Treats made by Kim of Live Life Too.

AMAZING Lemon Bars made by Mary of foodies: a southern california food blog.  I only gave my husband a little smidgen of the tiniest bite, poor guy.

I found out about Rosie Lee’s, a new British foods shop in San Diego, so will be taking a field trip day there soon.

 

And I finally got to meet Kathy of Panini Happy and Amanda of What We’re Eating.  Check out Amanda’s bag stuffed with goodies!

I also got to meet Amy from Do You Know the Muffin Pan? (how cute is that name?), Stephanie of The Recipe Renovator, Jenny of Vintage Sugarcube and Jenny of Foray into Food, whom I’ve known since my early Daring Baker days.  She and I always forget we both live in San Diego for some reason.

There were so many more I didn’t get to say hello to, but plan on doing just that the next time we all have the chance to get together.  Nice going, San Diego Food Bloggers.  Very.

p.s.  I’ll get you the strawberry tart recipe shortly, but I’m headed to BlogHer Food in Atlanta this next weekend, so cross your fingers that I get it written before I go.  It’s a great recipe!