There was once a woman who ate too many cakes. The doctors she visited shook their heads sadly and to avoid her imminent and inconvenient collapse in their offices, sent her rapidly on her way to experts in distant places.  One presented her with enormous luminous red pills, upon which were written the words: ‘Don’t eat me!’  So the woman didn’t.  ‘I will eat cake’ she shouted to the world and devised a cunning plan which allowed her to have as many as she wanted, within reason of course.  Part of her plan was this delicious Tarte normande, replete with life-giving apples and a pastry made with glowing grains called spelt from the land of the ancients.

The woman could see reformed fellow cake eaters falling everywhere around her, spinning with their hands on their stomachs, unable to enjoy their puddings.  So she decided to share her magic Tarte normande.

At first not one companion would touch it.

‘Don’t be silly!’ they all groaned. ‘We can’t eat cake!  Look, there’s custard in there and lots of delicious poison!’

And the woman gave a deep sigh and replied, ‘It’s not cake, it’s a tart, with spelt flour, oatmilk, honey and lots of natural stuff and there are apples in it!’

But still they protested.  ‘I’m not eating pastry and I definitely can’t make it!’ one of them muttered.  So she drew pictures to show how healthy the ingredients were and how easy it is to make spelt pastry. 

Sadly, the reformed cake eaters weren’t convinced and she worried she’d be forced to gobble up the entire tart by herself.  Well, not very worried.

She decided to persist and spoke ardently of the tart’s magical healing properties but still they doubted.  She pondered the matter and the next day patiently showed them more diagrams, charts, findings and statistics, which of course fully convinced them of the value of her words.  It helped enormously that this time she wore a business suit, having learnt from the story of the little prince that funny costumes and tie-dye just don’t help.

The cake-loving woman told her listeners she’d left some extra special instructions for making shortcrust here for anyone suffering from pastry confusion.  Then a young lad tentatively asked ‘So what do you do next with the pastry case?  and she was so happy she did a little dance and almost forgot to explain about blind baking, for which there are some special helpful tips here.

The crowd around the cake-loving woman grew and grew, and by the time she had showed them all how to fill the pastry case with apples and wonderful cream, many were drooling and planning to make this tart.

Soon they were all gathered around the oven waiting expectantly for the Tarte normande to emerge.  They shared it out amicably amongst themselves and as they chomped happily away, made silent promises to never turn their backs on cakes (or tarts) again.

But our cake-loving woman was still worried because there were only so many people she could make Tarte normande for.

Then she remembered the Land of Blog where you could reach out to a multitude of entities in the clouds.  And there she left drawings of how to create this wonderful tart so everyone could see how easy it was to make.  She hoped someone would give her a shiny medal for services to their land but it wasn’t to be, so she had another piece of tart to cheer herself up and slowly realised she really did not wish for any recompense at all.

As she munched contentedly away, she contemplated her beautiful life-changing recipe up in the clouds and wondered what she would make next…

Thanks for visiting and sorry I can only offer you virtual cake!   Till next time … happy baking, blogging or drooling!  🙂