French Onion Soup Tarts

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Hello friends! My life is currently full of thrills and wonders, and I am going to share two of them with you right away.

First, I am so excited to get to announce that the omnipotent Jen Coster is rejoining Team Gailey! Those of you who have been around for a while will remember Jen as my henchlady from a few years ago, and now I’m thrilled to get to work with them again. Don’t worry, Josh isn’t going anywhere; the two of them are currently working together to roast me within an inch of my life on a daily basis. Jen is bringing their absolutely brilliant mind to a lot of Team Gailey strategy work, including putting together some of our approach to next year’s Discord launch. Jen, you were never really gone, but it’s amazing to have you back.

Second, I’ve invented a tart I think you’ll all like. The recipe is real street cat: Completely bonkers at first blush, but secretly pretty easygoing if you trust your instincts and approach it with patience. I hope you make it.

French onion soup mini tarts

Part One: Demoralize the onions

1. Chop up two big yellow onions. You know how onions are, sometimes they’re normal size and sometimes they’re just absolute honkers? You want two of the latter. If you can’t find any Brobdingnagian onions, go with three or four regular guys.
2. Throw all the chopped onions into a big, wide pot or deepish pan. I used my big dutch oven for this. Importantly, the vessel should be cold. No oil or salt or pepper, please—just onions. Turn the heat on to a very, very low setting. 
3. Cook the onions, stirring occasionally, for the rest of your fucking life. I’m talking four or five hours. This is a great recipe to make while you’re making a hundred other things. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The key to caramelizing onions well is that you don’t want to be able to hear them cooking. If that pan is sizzling loud enough that you can’t hear a whispered conversation over it, the onions are either boiling or frying, and that’s not our goal. They will seem, for the first hour, as if they aren’t cooking at all; if the pan is warm, though, you’re in the right territory. Trust yourself.

Part Two: Dense Soup

1. Once the onions have significantly reduced in volume and are a lovely deep caramel color, and your entire home smells incredible, you’re ready to move on. Add two cups of beef or vegetable broth to the pot and give ‘er a really good stir, scraping the bottom of the pot to loosen any fond that’s stuck there. (Fond is, you will recall, the home of flavor; never neglect it.)
2. Add a bay leaf or two and some cracked black pepper.
3. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the volume of the liquid in the pot has reduced enough that the onions aren’t fully covered anymore.

Part Three: Turn it into filling.

1. Okay, here’s where we start off-roading. Stay with me. While that liquid from Part Two is simmering, you’re going to clean and chop about a pound of mushrooms—I recommend baby bella or button, but really, any meaty mushroom will do. Don’t use like, Lion’s Mane for this—you want something with a lot of sponge power. Yes, do use the stems, we aren’t here to throw out good material.
2. Put the chopped mushrooms into a dry skillet and cook over medium-high heat until they sweat out their moisture and take on a little color. They should be starting to look a little dry before you pull them off the heat.
3. Once the volume of the liquid in the pot from part 2 has decreased, add the mushrooms to the pot and let it simmer for a little while. The mushrooms will soak up a bunch of the liquid, so we won’t be dealing with soggy filling.
4. Once the pot has almost no visible liquid remaining—as in, you can drag a spoon through it and see almost no liquid pooling on the bottom—add in a few tablespoons of butter and take it off the heat. Stir gently until the butter is melted and everything is looking lovely and glossy.
5. Put the contents of the pot into a wire mesh strainer over a bowl. Agitate and press very gently with a spoon—you’re not trying to mash anything up, you’re just pressing out excess liquid. Set the contents of the strainer aside.
6. Mix a few tablespoons of the liquid with a tablespoon of cornstarch to make a slurry. Return the liquid to the pot and whisk in the slurry over medium heat. Simmer until it thickens into a gravy.
7. Add the contents of the strainer back into the gravy and stir to combine. 

***You can do everything up to this point ahead of time, cool the filling to room temp, and store in the fridge overnight.***

Part Four: Tart it up

1. Set up some mini tart shells from a box in the freezer. What, you thought I was making that shit from scratch? No way. I can’t eat gluten. No gluten-free tart dough I’m capable of making could hold a candle to Sweet Loren’s gluten-free frozen phyllo. If you’re working with dough that’s not already in a shell-shape, line the cups of a greased, normal-sized muffin tin with dough. I didn’t bother blind baking my tart shells for this, but do what you want.
2. Put some of the filling into each tart shell. Top the filling with a sharp cheese like gruyere or fontina. I wouldn’t be mad at parmesan, but I don’t think it’s a great fit. Don’t use American cheese – it stays melty, which is an asset in some contexts, but isn’t what we want for this application.
3. Pop your tarts into the oven at 375F for however long the box says to cook your tart shells. When you pull them out, the cheese on top should be bubbly and golden.

That’s it. I told you, this recipe looks wild and involved—but when you get down to it, all you’re doing is neglecting some warm onions for a long time, then making thick soup. Don’t be intimidated! It’s just food. It’s not the boss of you.

Spread Me is in the Dictionary?!

Last week, I got the wildest DM of my life from Alix Harrow (author of The Everlasting, a book you may have noticed me yelling about nonstop on this here newsletter).

AABB wins an ALAN award!

Authors Against Book Bans was recently honored with an ALAN award! Watch AABB President Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s acceptance speech here and click here to donate to AABB, where every single dollar you hand them goes directly into the fight against book banning and censorship.

Spread Me is on NPR’s 2025 List of Books We Love 

Absolutely thrilled to find that Gabino Iglesias reviewed Spread Me for NPR’s year-end roundup! Thank you, NPR, and thank you, Gabino. This means the world.

Amal El-Mohtar’s Love Letters essay

"It astonishes me, now, to recall how much I trusted you: your intentions, your affection, your perspective. We had so much in common. We loved all the same things. We spoke to each other with a gasping fluency for each other’s sentences, racing each other into our shared understanding of friendship, of how much we loved seeing women love each other. We called each other wives in jest, shared rooms and confidences, sang duets, dressed each other’s hair.

But I couldn’t trust you with my rage."

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In the meantime, remember: Do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up.

-gailey