Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten’s Easy Fruit Dessert Is the Perfect Recipe for Summer
Ina Garten has the perfect summer fruit dessert recipe that’s rustic yet elegant and is so easy to make. The Barefoot Contessa star shared how simple it is to make her beautiful summer fruit crostata that’s sure to impress guests.
The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ star’s fruit crostata starts with an easy pastry crust
Garten demonstrated how to make her easy summer fruit crostata recipe during an episode of Barefoot Contessa, which started with the pastry crust.
She combined flour, sugar, salt, and butter in a food processor and pulsed it to combine the ingredients. She also offered a quick pro-tip for pastry: “The butter has to be really cold and then when the heat of the oven hits the butter it gives off steam and that’s what makes really light flaky pastry.”
Then she added ice water as the food processor motor was running. “You want it really cold so the butter doesn’t become incorporated,” she explained.
The Barefoot Contessa star floured the counter and placed the dough on it, dividing it into two crusts, one for the crostata recipe and another to be frozen for future use.
Garten rolled the crust into an 11-inch circle and placed it on a parchment-lined baking sheet, then she made the filling.
Ina Garten’s summer fruit crostata recipe is a perfect combination of seasonal flavors
“So the filling is peaches, plums, and blueberries,” she explained. Garten had another easy tip to help with peeling the peaches. “What I’ve done with the peaches is I’ve started by blanching them so I could just take off the skins,” Garten noted. “It just takes a minute or two in boiling water. And then I’ll put them in ice water, just to stop the cooking.”
She combined the peaches, plums, and blueberries with flour, sugar, freshly grated orange zest, and fresh-squeezed orange juice in a bowl. “It really is like making a pie,” she said. “You want a little bit of flour to thicken it and a little juice to make sort of the goo.”
Garten tossed everything together then placed the fruit mixture in the middle of the crust.
She adds a topping to make the dessert ‘really special’
Garten made a crumble topping by combining flour, sugar, salt, and cold butter in a food processor. “It’s what makes it really special,” Garten explained. “I love the crumbly texture of it with the juicy fruit. It’s wonderful.” She poured the mixture into a bowl and worked everything together with her hands until it formed crumbles, then sprinkled it over the fruit.
“The juices of the fruit are just going to bubble away and this is going to be nice and crisp and the pastry is really light and flaky,” Garten explained. She pulled the edges of the pastry up to contain the filling and baked the fruit crostata in a 450 degree Fahrenheit oven for 25 to 30 minutes.
The full summer fruit crostata recipe is available on the Food Network website.
