Bakeable • Blogger Kate Wood’s tomato galette bursts with summer’s best flavors.

Alabama blogger Kate Wood specializes in sweets, but she makes an exception for this gorgeous galette studded with summer’s brightest stars.

“Whenever you invite kids into the kitchen, it’s a mess. But it is so worth it.”

Kate Wood’s Instagram feed may look perfectly curated, but this blogger and mom isn’t afraid to share what’s really going on behind the filter. “Whenever you invite kids into the kitchen, it’s going to be a mess,” she says. “But it is so worth it.” Kate lives in Alabama with her husband and their three children under 7 in a house brimming with energy, especially around dinnertime. “Dinner is a circus; it’s loud and chaotic, but sometimes it’s easy!” she says. To make feeding a family of five easier on herself, Kate occasionally makes dinner look a little like a picnic. Everyone sits together on a big blanket spread out on the porch or on the living room floor. “My two oldest get so excited about it,” Kate says. Tacos are the top request in the Wood household, but Kate’s stunning summer tomato galette pops up at the picnics, too. “I have three little people and a picky-eater husband who aren’t interested in just eating a whole fresh tomato,” she says. This galette is the perfect disguise for freshfrom-the-garden summer vegetables because “it’s almost like a pizza!”—especially when sprinkled with a handful of salty feta cheese. Kate specializes in sweets and desserts on her blog Wood & Spoon (on Instagram, as @katie_clova, she has more than 135,000 followers). But summer in the South calls for a savory exception to her typical cookies, cakes and frozen delicacies. This recipe allows the family to enjoy vegetables from her garden. Tomatoes and peppers grow abundantly in the warmer months, as do a few big eggplants.

In this recipe, Kate’s garden-grown bounty meets a perfectly golden crust for a gobsmackingly gorgeous dish that her followers reacted to with a chorus of “Yum!” “Wow!” and “Oh my goodness!” That flawless pie crust texture comes from using two sources of fat. “Butter provides the flavor, and shortening provides the texture—i love a really flaky pie crust,” Kate says. For the best results, she suggests using a light touch when bringing the dough together. “Overworking the dough is what makes it tough,” she adds. And she reminds new bakers that practice makes perfect; it may take a few attempts to make a crust with just the right amount of chew balanced by the layers of crispness. But even if the first crust has a few flaws, it will still be delicious when slathered with a layer of creamy pesto sauce and covered in a blanket of summer-ripened tomatoes. “Don’t be discouraged— your next one will be better!” Kate says. She understands bakers who may be intimidated by homemade pie crust. After all, she learned to bake by making the most intimidating dessert out there: her own wedding cake. “It was a two-tiered cake,” Kate says. “In retrospect, it was pretty ugly. But I was so proud! There was so much that went into preparing for it.” Scrolling through her nearly 2,000 posts of stunning treats dappled with chocolate, icing and pastel sprinkles, it’s clear that Kate’s skills have come a long way since that first vanilla wedding cake. Even her more organic-looking dishes are showstopping creations—as you can see by her rustic galette gracing this issue’s cover.