Add color and cheer to your pandemic holiday table with pie artist Lauren Ko’s geometrically-designed pies. This one, from Ko’s new cookbook, “Pieometry: Modern Tart Art and Pie Design for the Eye and the Palate” (William Morrow; $32.50), is inspired by the tangram, a Chinese dissection puzzle made up of geometric shapes arranged in varying combinations to form other shapes.
While this particular pie gets its bright pop from tropical fruits reminiscent of summer, its warm, speculoos crust and tangy cranberry curd are totally winter. Dragonfruit is available at most Asian markets, but Ko says you can use papaya, pineapple or persimmon instead.
Happy as a Gram
Speculoos Cookie Crust
Ingredients
32 packaged speculoos cookies
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, melted
Directions
Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Put the cookies in a food processor and blitz until the cookies are a uniformly sandy texture. Drizzle in the melted butter and pulse until the mixture comes together like wet sand.
Turn the mixture out into a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Use your fingers to pack the mixture tightly into the pan, going all the way up the sides, then use your palm to flatten the bottom. Make sure the edges and the bottom are compact and of even thickness. Place the tart pan on a baking sheet to catch any butter drips that occur during baking and to provide stability as you transfer the tart shell in and out of the oven.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the crust is no longer shiny with butter. It will continue to crisp up as it cools.
Keep the tart shell in the pan, cool completely, and store in the fridge or freezer until ready to fill.
Cranberry curd
Ingredients
15 ounces cranberries, fresh or frozen
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon kosher salt
3 large eggs plus 2 egg yolks
6 tablespoons butter, room temperature, cut into ½-inch cubes
Directions
Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Combine the cranberries and 2 tablespoons water in a 2-quart saucepan. Stir over medium heat until the cranberries burst and start to break down, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and press the cranberries through a fine-mesh sieve with a silicone spatula, extracting as much puree as possible. Discard the remaining pulp and return the puree to the saucepan.
Add the lemon juice, sugar, salt, eggs and egg yolks to the cranberry puree and whisk to combine. Cook over medium heat, whisking continuously, until the mixture is warmed through. Add the butter gradually and stir until all the cubes have melted. Continue cooking until the mixture is thickened enough to coat a spatula, 5 to 8 minutes, stirring frequently and scraping the corners of the saucepan.
Remove from the heat and strain the curd through a fine-mesh sieve.
Place the baked tart shell, still in the tart pan, on a baking sheet. Pour the curd into the tart shell, smoothing the surface. Bake the tart for 5 minutes, just to set the filling
Cool completely before decorating.
Tangram design process
Ingredients
1 firm mango
1 white-fleshed dragon fruit (pitaya)
2 or 3 firm kiwis
Directions
Peel and cut the fruit into ¼-inch slices. Arrange the fruit slices on a large plate organized by type.
Cut any type of triangle — equilateral, scalene, obtuse, acute, isosceles, right — from a piece of mango, slicing as close to the edge as possible to maximize the yield of each fruit slice. Pause here if you feel the need to Google image search some triangles. Otherwise, throw math to the wind and cut any sort of shape with three sides. Place it along a tart edge.
Cut another shape from a kiwi slice and place it next to the mango, leaving some space between the fruit, not unlike tile grout lines. Generally, polygons like triangles, parallelograms and trapezoids work well for this design. I avoid shapes with more than four sides mainly to save time, but if manually sliced hexagons or even hendecagons (back to Google…) are your thing, by all means, go wild! This is your tart, your life.
Cut another shape, perhaps a rhombus, from a slice of dragon fruit, and fit it next to the kiwi. Continue cutting shapes, alternating among fruits, and puzzling the pieces together on the tart. Build out from your starting point and slowly fill the whole surface, gradually working your way to the other edge.
Keep in the refrigerator until ready to serve. This tart is best consumed within 2 days.
— From Lauren Ko’s “Pieometry: Modern Tart Art and Pie Design for the Eye and the Palate” (William Morrow; $32.50)