Maple Walnut Tarts- A Taste of Canada

This is undoubtedly one of the most important recipes I know of. Whenever I go with my family to the pick-your-own farm to spend a beautiful Ontario summer's day collecting berries and fighting mosquitoes, we'd always get the maple walnut tarts they sold. However, at their price it was unlikely that they were made with real maple syrup, posing me with the challenge of a more authentically mapley alternative. I also use a butter pie crust that's flaky and tastes amazing, complementing the filling rather than merely holding its nutty, gooey goodness. For such a fantastic food, it's incredibly easy as well- all you need to do is mix up the filling and pour it onto walnuts in parbaked pastry shells. You could use frozen tart shells... but please don't.

These taste best in the sunshine, especially sitting on the back of your car while surrounded by rolling fields of wheat and watching the trees rustle in the breeze, but at home while watching TV will also work. Just the taste will bring you to a happier place.

Maple Walnut Tarts

1 Recipe preferred pie dough
2 Eggs
2/3 C. Dark maple syrup
1/2 C. Brown sugar
2 TBSP (30 ml.) Melted butter
Pinch of salt
1 Tsp. Vanilla or maple extract
3/4 - 1 C. Walnut pieces

Preheat oven to 220℃. Roll out the pie dough and cut into rounds with a large glass. Push the rounds into the holes of a muffin pan to form tart crusts and prick well with holes using a fork. Parbake for about 15 minutes. Use a small glass or end of a rolling pin to push the dent in again if they puff up.

Mix eggs, salt, syrup, sugar, butter and vanilla/maple extract well. Place a tablespoon of walnut pieces in each parbaked tart shell and top with the egg mixture. Return to the over for another 15 minutes, or until bubbling.

Free-Form Stone Fruit and Frangipane Tart - and All-Star Pie Crust

Hullo and welcome to any readers- I've been procrastinating on creating a blog where I could keep record of all the recipes I've tried, how they turned out, and and modifications I made for a while, and now it seems I'm finally getting on with it. I'm hoping to use this mostly as a personal reference tool that perhaps someone else might also find useful from time to time- an open-access kitchen diary of sorts.

Now then, the recipe.

In case you can't see, the tart barely fits onto a baking tray. Not that I'm complaining.

At long last some half-decent stone fruits are showing up in supermarkets, which is reason enough for me to celebrate- few foods are as miserable as a mealy peach in the middle of winter. If there's good stone fruits, summer is definitely on its way. Normally I'd eat any I buy long before I get a chance to bake with them, but I've wanted to try a free-form tart for quite some time, so I squirreled a few away in the back of the fruit bowl to make something special.

Stone fruits (that is, peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, et cetera) all go incredibly well with almonds, so an almond frangipane is the natural accompaniment. I've also added a little vanilla, bitter almond extract (which gives the frangipane that marzipanney almondness that might be too assertive in other uses, but is just right here) and a bit of apricot schnapps. The alcohol isn't strictly necessary, but it reacts with the fatty acids in the butter and almonds to produce aromatic esters, which is why I love baking with it so much- feel free to omit it if you don't like ingesting alcohol, though.

I'm pretty proud of the pastry, too- it's a sort of all-star compilation of all the little things I've learned to do to ameliorate my pie crusts. It's got pastry flour to reduce the gluten (which makes the dough chewy- also the reason you shouldn't work the dough too much), a bit of creme frâiche and apple cider vinegar (acids help to tenderize the dough) and is refrigerated several times while being folded on itself in between, giving it an insane flakiness. And no shortening!

Altogether, the tart is incredibly simple yet insanely good. The juicy fruits, creamy frangipane and flaky crust come together in delicious summery harmony, and it's got that attractively rugged look since there's no mold involved. If you've got any surplus of stone fruit (should there even be such a thing) try this tart out.

I finished this tart at about 4:30. This is all that remained the next morning. Pity the plate wasn't
big enough for the whole tart, but this thing is kind of enormous.

Free-Form Stone Fruit and Frangipane Tart

For the All-Star Pie Crust:

1 C. All purpose flour
1 C. Pastry flour (or alternatively, another cup of AP flour with two tablespoons replaced with cornstarch. A good trick if you don't keep pastry flour onhand)
1/2 Tsp. Salt
1 TBSP Sugar
3/4 Tsp. Apple cider vinegar
About 1/2 C. Cold milk (enough to make the dough hold together)
2 TBSP Creme frâiche or sour cream
3/4 C. (170 g.) Butter, cold and in small cubes

Mix all of the dry ingredients. Add the cubed butter and work with your hands or a pastry cutter to crumble up the butter into pea-sized pieces. Then, use your fingers to squish the bits of butter into flat "leaves". Refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Add the remaining wet ingredients, using only so much milk as needed to form a cohesive dough. Work as little as possible and form a singular ball of dough. Flatten into a disk and fold one half onto the other. Again, flatten that and fold it onto itself. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface and, again, fold one half over the other. Flatten with the rolling pin and repeat. Refrigerate another 15 minutes.

For the frangipane filling

2 C. Blanched whole almonds
1/3 C. Sugar
2 Large eggs
2 TBSP Cornstarch
1/4 C. Butter, softened
1 TBSP Stone fruit eau de vie or schnapps, or dark rum
1 Tsp. Vanilla extract
1/4 Tsp. Almond extract

Toast 1 cup of the almonds in the oven at 180 ℃ for 5 minutes (until just barely browning). Grind both cups of the almonds in a food processor with sugar until very fine. Add the eggs and cornstarch and process until fully integrated. Add the remaining ingredients and process until very smooth.

To finish

About 1 1/2 Lbs. Stone fruits (I used a nectarine, a peach, two plums and two apricots), sliced into relatively thin wedges
1/4 C. Raw cane sugar or demerara sugar
An egg or some milk, to brush on

Preheat to 200 ℃.

Roll out the pastry into a roughly circular shape. spread the centre with the almond frangipane, leaving about three inches bare around the edges. Arrange the fruit wedges in the pattern of your choosing on the frangipane and fold the edges of the dough upwards onto the fruit and frangipane to surround it. Brush the surrounding dough with either milk or a beaten egg and sprinkle with the sugar. Refrigerate the tart (yes, again) for 15 minutes.

Bake for about 45 minutes, and 15 more minutes at 180℃. Let cool for an hour before cutting.