It was what -- March? -- when I gave you all a glimpse at this recipe. Three months, six kind comments requesting an expanded post, and three-thousand miles later, this considerably overdue recipe is finally here.

The truth of the matter is that it's absurdly simple, and it utilizes techniques that we've already featured on this website with previous posts. The filling, a simple lemon curd, is a variation on the filling for our Grapefruit Curd Tulips, while the crust is taken straight from our French Fruit Tart with Vanilla Crème -- and to be honest, if you cheat and use a frozen pie crust...well, I'm not going to tell anyone.

Let's get right to it.

I really do wish I had the time to update this page more often.

That's not to say that I don't get satisfaction putting up one recipe a week; it's just that, for every one dish that appears here, there are often five or six others that don't make the cut, whether due to time, photographic quality, or other intangible factors.

For instance, when I look at these minty Dark Chocolate Starlight Cookies...

I really can't make this any easier for you.

The fact of the matter is that there's a certain minimal threshold of effort as far as cooking goes -- odds are, you're going to have to chop something, or mix something, or measure something. Do you have to do that with today's recipe? Sure. But you could probably get away with just winging it.

While we've had simple desserts in the past -- Three-Ingredient Cheesecake or Ginger-Caramel Icebox Cake, anyone? -- this week's entry proves that easy and gorgeous, patisserie-worthy pastry can, indeed, go hand-in-hand. Let's get to it.

I was going to post the Senegalese recipe that I promised you last week, but I'm afraid there's something we have to address first.

You see, one of my favorite things about Burning Pasta is the feedback that I receive from readers. Whether in the form of post comments, e-mails, Facebook notes, or in-person conversation, it’s always gratifying to know that people are not only reading, but also enjoying the content here on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, all too often, I hear a common refrain in these communiqués, which, if I might paraphrase it, goes something like this: “I love reading the blog and looking at the pictures, but a lot of the recipes seem beyond my skill level.” While I’d heartily disagree – neither myself nor the Pasta Burner have any formal cookery training whatsoever – I can understand and sympathize with such concerns.

However, the truth of the matter is that such worries are baseless -- chefs obfuscate, cookbooks lie, and, as a result, there are certain ingredients and preparation techniques that we’ve been brainwashed about; we become convinced they are just shy of impossible to pull off. Among these, I would argue that no area of the kitchen is more clogged with cloak and dagger intrigue than the domain of the pâtissier, no food more fetishized in this manner than French pastry.

I’m here to tell you that many of those breathless demands about French baking that you’ve heard – your butter has to be at an exact temperature; you have to use ten different kinds of flour for ten different kinds of bread; you have to rise your yeast breads in a towel; you need to follow every inch of traditional technique or else all is lost and you’ve disgraced Belle France herself – it’s all just meant to scare you, to keep you from trying, to make sure you spend your days reading food blogs instead of cooking from them.

Well, no more, I say! This week’s recipe is as classic and delicious as French pastry gets, except for one thing – we’re tossing out all the technique. Let’s get to it.