What a Tart!

Visitors. They give me an opportunity to try something other than standard meals. To take a bit more time and make something fancier. I experiment on visitors. Mostly it goes well. Today went exceptionally well.

We always have nibblies with these guests and a main meal and dessert. We spend a lot of time eating, drinking and being merry. The sun was shining today and sunny winter days are the best for sitting out under our pergola. It's always far too hot in summer. So we enjoyed a lovely roast lamb lunch with lots of vegies and after a bit of bocce and some baseball we sat in the dimming light with hot drinks and a frangipane tart.

How can you have a failsafe frangipane tart?

Well that is what makes this recipe interesting. I suppose you could substitute cashew meal, but that is an awful lot of cashew and would contain too many amines. I chose to substitute quinoa flakes. I had read somewhere on the internet that some ingenious person had used them to make nut free french macaron. I tried that too and they worked pretty well, so why wouldn't they work for this tart?

Quinoa is not usually a flavour you expect in desserts and the first mouthful caught me a little off guard, but after that I was amazed at how good it tasted. The texture was pretty close to the real thing and my guests said they would not have known that it wasn't the real thing if I hadn't told them so.

For the tart shell I used the same recipe that I have used for everything so far (I'm sure I'll try a different recipe one day, but I had some in the freezer, so today was not that day)

Pear Frangipane Tart

Sweet shortcrust pastry

• 340g gluten free plain flour
• a small pinch of salt
• 150g nuttelex
• 90g icing sugar
• 2 eggs beaten

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180℃
2. Sift flour, salt and sugar into the bowl of a food processor add the nuttelex and pulse until the nuttelex is incorporated and you have something resembling bread crumbs.
3. Add the eggs with the motor running and process until a dough starts to form.
4. Tip out onto some cling wrap, knead into a ball, wrap and put in the fridge for at least an hour.
5. Roll the pastry between sheets of baking paper and line a 25cm loose based fluted tart tin trimming the edges. Place in the freezer for about half an hour.
6. Line with baking paper and fill with baking weights or dried beans or rice.
7. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove beads and paper and bake for a further 4 minutes or until the pastry is just cooked, but still pale.

Filling

• 140g quinoa flakes
• 150g icing sugar
• 25g plain GF flour (today we had whitewings)
• 150g nuttelex
• seeds from 1 inch piece of vanilla (optional)
• 3 eggs lightly beaten
• 5 pear halves (tinned in syrup)

Method

1. Place quinoa, icing sugar and flour into a food processor and blitz at high speed to get the quinoa a little finer. Remove and put into another bowl.
2. Put nuttelex and vanilla into the processor and mix on until combined. 
3. Add the quinoa mixture and process on a medium to low speed until well combined.
4. Slowly add eggs while the processor is still running and mix until it is well incorporated.
5. Pour mixture into tart shell and roughly smooth over with a spatula. 
6. Cut pears in half and gently press into frangipane.
7. Bake for approximately 45 mins. When cooked the frangipane will be puffed, golden and firm to touch.
8. Cool and dust with icing sugar to serve.

Just out of the oven

This was lovely by itself, but if you were inclined to make it, then a dairy free custard would go nicely. Or, if you are the dairy eating kind of person, a blob of whipped cream would also go down a treat.

Ready to eat.

Variations - Gluten - use wheat flour
                    Dairy - use butter instead of nuttelex
                    Salicylates - use any soft tolerated fruit eg. apricots, nectarine, blueberries