Bad News Tart

My youngest brother is about to leave for two years to serve a mission for our church in El Salvador. I'm sure that the hermanitas in San Salvador are going to take REALLY good care of him, but I don't think that he'll be eating his favorite comfort foods any time soon. Brendan is a huge fan of my cooking (possibly my biggest fan) so I invited him over for a last meal.
As per his request I cooked quiche, and while that delicious cheesy, eggy, goodness was bubbling away in the oven, I decided to throw together a dessert using the odds and ends in my pantry. The big question was, what to cook? I've been trolling around on Pinterest today, and one of the trends in the cooking categories has been lemony desserts. Brendan is a big fan of non-chocolate desserts, so I got the idea to make a French-style fruit tart. I thought it would go well with the quiche, and we have a lot of yummy fresh fruit in the house right now.
I used this recipe to make a citrus shortbread crust. I have no vanilla, so I used coconut extract. I also have no lemons so I used lime juice (lime zest is usually pretty nasty). While it was cooking up, I diced some strawberries and rendered them with a little sugar. I have some CHOICE mangoes right now, so I diced up some of those, too. Somewhere in the back of my pantry I discovered a packet of Dream Whip, which I prepared with lemon extract (again, due to a lack of vanilla).
Here is the final product:

Oh. My. Gosh. 

This is SO good. By the end of the first slice we were all nearly weeping tears of joy. The richness of the crust plays off of the tart, fresh fruit and the cool creaminess of the whipped topping so perfectly that Brendan named it Bad News Tart, since he thinks that you should give people a slice of this right before giving them bad news to soften the blow. 

So next time you have a younger brother going on a mission, or bad news to deliver to someone, give this sweet tart a try. You will not be disappointed.