Lili and Vance cookin’ at home

By admin on July 15th, 2010

Topped with fun: With creativity, kids can turn frozen pastries into sweet treats
 by JUNE NAYLOR, Special to the Star-Telegram
Welcome to another week of the Star-Telegram’s summer Kids Cooking Club!
Each week for six weeks in the Thursday Your Life section, we are presenting a local chef and/or restaurateur working in the kitchen with kids, complete with recipes. The goal is to have your kids cook their way through the recipes (with some parental guidance), and take a few notes and shoot a photo or two, if you like. At the end of the summer, club members will receive an official certificate of completion.
This week, we’re featuring recipes and ideas from Vance Martin, a Fort Worth chef and restaurateur, who is joined in his kitchen by daughter Lili. Get out your electric mixer and prepare your sweet tooth for a treat.
Meet the expert
Vance Martin
Chef and owner, Lili’s Bistro on Magnolia and Cat City Grill, Fort Worth
With assistance from daughter, Lili Martin
Chef Vance, who splits time between his two restaurants, likes to entertain at home in the kitchen that he recently remodeled. The space is perfect for teaming up with 6-year-old Lili to make special dishes.
Growin up around food, Lili has developed a good palate at an early age and is crazy about raw veggies. Her dad says she loves all meat and any fish he puts in front of her–she says her favorite food is boiled shrimp, served cold–and that she “will eat feat cheese by the spoonful.”
The day we visited with Lili and her dad, they were focusing on a new dessert creation that takes just a few minutes to make. The sweet treat only requires a few basic ingredients, and you can make variations to suit your tastes.
Vance and Lili used chocolate pudding, but you could use other flavors or you could add vanilla or almond extract, as well as ground cinnamon. When combining the pudding and prepared dessert topping, kids can easily help with the mixing process.
Piping the mixture on top of the baked tarts might take a little practice. Vance and Lili used a homemade pastry bag, fashioned from a plastic, zipper-top bag and a metal pastry tip. If you don’t have pastry tips, you can still pipe the pudding mixture from your plastic bag by cutting off just a tiny corner.
Use your imagination for decorating the tarts. It can be a great party activity too.
Here is the dessert Vance and Lili Martin shared with us.
Lili’s chocolate cream tarts
Serves 8
  • 8 frozen puff pastry shells, such as Pepperidge Farms
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
  • 1 (3.9-ounce) box of instant chocolate pudding
  • 1 cup of colk milk
  • 2 cups frozen dessert topping (such as Cool Whip), thawed
  • Garnishes such as toasted almond slivers, chocolate chips, cherries, sprinkles and whipped cream

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  1. Place puff pastries on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush the pastries with melted butter and sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake according to package instructions. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.
  2. Prepare the chocolate pudding with milk according to package directions, chilling in the refrigerator for 5 minutes to set. Combine chilled pudding and whipped dessert topping in a bowl and blend with an electric mixer at medium speed for one minute, until fluffy and mixed well.
  3. Place the cooled pastries on a serving platter. To prepare your pastry bag, cut off a tiny corner of a large plastic bag with a zipper top. Into that cut corner, push a 5/16-inch or No. 803) metal pastry tip. Transfer the fluffy pudding mixture into the bag and zip it closed. Pipe the mixture through the metal tip into swirls on top of the pastries, moving your hand in small circles while pressing the mixture out of the bag.
  4. Top with your choice of toasted nuts, chocolate chips, sprinkles, cherries and/or whipped cream. Serve immediately.
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