Fresh Cherry Tart with Cream Cheese Filling

What a beautiful way to celebrate fresh cherries. This impressive dessert can be made in about an hour, can be made ahead, and is so refreshing for summer.

The most work you will have to do is pitting the cherries. I do not have a cherry pitter, so setting the cherry on a bottle and pushing the pit through with a chopstick was my method. I found that 1.5 pounds of cherries was sufficient for my tart pan.

The pastry is very wet, similar to cookie dough, so definitely follow directions and roll between plastic or parchment paper. The recipe makes a generous amount of dough. My only critique is that the final crust was perhaps too thick, but that is just personal preference. It tastes like a yummy, not too sweet lemon sugar cookie. Also, the crust came out of the tart pan with no problem.

I did use seedless raspberry jam to glaze the cherries as directed as it melts smooth and clear. For serving I melted cherry jam with a couple tablespoons amaretto to drizzle over. This brings home that sweet cherry flavor.

I made this early in the day and by time for dessert after dinner the crust was still crisp and the cream filling still smooth and fluffy. So good served with an espresso and a small glass of amaretto over ice! This would be beautiful using fresh peaches glazed with peach or apricot preserves as well.