Rosewater Macadamia Mini-Tarts

"The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All of a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts And took them quite away!"

Dodgson
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ch.11, 'Who Stole the Tarts?'.

Whenever I think of macadamia, I automatically think of Australia and Hawaii. That's because during my younger days, friends or relatives who had travelled to these faraway lands (when I was young, the world seemed bigger) frequently brought us back chocolate-covered macadamia candy as gifts from their trips. As an adult, I learnt that macadamia nuts are actually native to Australia, but were imported to Hawaii where they thrived. They are apparently also now grown in New Caledonia and Indonesia.

When I bought my big bag of macadamia nuts (unshelled....urrghh), I knew I wanted to make tarts with them. The buttery-flavored nuts would be soft enough to cut through with a knife and would be perfect as a tart filling. On its own, though, I felt it wouldn't give enough of a kick and all of you who visit here often would know that I'm all for tastebud-titillation when it comes to anything I bake. Macadamia always tastes heavenly with orange or chocolate but as usual, I resisted the temptation to go with the norm. It was my James Dean-rebel gene exerting its dominance in the kitchen yet again.   

So I think of Rosewater, and flashes of Indian sweets (gulab jamun), Turkish Delight and air bandung (pink rosewater-flavored, sweet drink) cross my mental palate. The possibility of a floral, buttery, nutty-flavored tart seemed more tempting and was definitely more my style. Subtle but memorable. No mere coincidence then that my life is reflected in many of my baked goodies...

Rosewater lending a floral note to the pastry and filling.

When it comes to making an undeniably tasty crust, I like to use the rather nutty, low-gluten and easier-to-digest spelt flour. Although my crust is not butter-less (fat chance!), it is eggless as spelt makes the dough stickier to work with. And I incorporated just enough Rosewater in the dough (as well as the filling) to enable you to detect the floral note as you bite into the tart. I'm partial to eating flowers, what can I say?

Shelling brings me no joy.... but oh, anything for the buttery nut!

Apart from the nailbreaking session with the macadamias, this was probably the one of the easiest tarts I have ever made - and I don't say that lightly because I've made many easy tarts. Cooking and prep times are also minimal, so this is a good one to impress guests for when they drop by darnedly unexpectedly.

The custard filling rises in the oven but falls and wraps itself around the nuts upon cooling.

It's a known fact that incorporating macadamia nuts into a heart healthy diet can reduce cardiovascular disease risks. Macadamia nuts have higher levels of monounsaturated fats, like those found in olive oil compared with other tree nuts. I had actually piped melted, white chocolate over several of these tarts but I'm not showing you them so that we can all keep to the perception that these mini-tarts are indeed, healthy. ;-)

Rosewater Macadamia Mini-Tarts
Makes: 9 mini-tarts (2½ inches wide)
Ingredients:
Spelt Rosewater Crust
250g spelt flour
125g cold butter, cubed
2 to 3 tablespoons Rosewater*
(*you can get this at Asian culinary stores)

Macadamia Cream Filling
200g whole macadamia nuts, shelled
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1 egg
1 ½ tablespoon Rosewater

Method:

1. Make the crust first: in a bowl, rub the cold butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Make a well in the center of the mixture, gradually add Rosewater and knead the flour into a pastry ball.

2. Preheat oven to 180C. Divide dough into 9 balls, take one and press onto the base and sides of a mini-tart pan (1-cm deep) to form the crust. Repeat with the rest of the dough balls. Prick the base of the crust with a fork several times to release hot air while baking.

3. Place tart pans in the oven and bake for 10 minutes.

4. In the meantime, prepare the custard cream filling. Whisk the brown sugar, cream, corn syrup, egg and Rosewater for about a minute until well-combined.

5. After 10 minutes, remove the semi-cooked spelt crust from the oven. Arrange a layer of macadamia nuts on the base of each crust and carefully pour the custard cream on top of the nuts, filling it until you just cover all the nuts.

6. Bake at 180C for 15 minutes until custard is just set. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a rack for about 10 minutes. Mini-tarts can be served warm or cool with ice-cream or whipped cream.

Spelt Apple Pie Cake

When it came to discovering the intricacies of the opposite sex, I was definitely a late bloomer. It wasn't until I was out of my teens (20, in fact) when I had my first romantic liaison. He was my first take-home beau (to meet the parents, that is) and he was French. Boy, was I glad I waited...

We met at University and during some semester breaks, we would drive across the English Channel to spend some time at his family's home in the French countryside. The days were idyllic and amongst other things, I learnt how to pick grapes from the vineyard, and plums, cherries, apples from the orchard. Those were my first farm-to-table experiences but being a young lass, I had little appreciation of what that really meant.

The first time we went apple-picking, we'd spread a canvas blanket at the base of the tree before he climbed up the apple tree and shook a fruit-laden branch. To my amazement, a number of red apples came showering effortlessly down to the ground, every one of them missing my head like a miraculous spectacle. 

Of course, in a commercial orchard this tree-shaking business wouldn't have been allowed because the fallen apples would have been  heavily bruised and unsuitable for sale. Well, I didn't know any better in those days, and as we laid back against the canvas munching our crisp, red apples, I marvelled at how unglossy (unwaxed) they were and how authentically sweet they tasted. Needless to say, those times brought me so much joy.

His grandmother was kind enough to teach me how to bake those freshly-picked fruits into the most wonderful tarts and cakes. In the process, she also taught me how to light up her antique Aga oven and control its temperature, something I'd never done before and never again since. All this while we communicated in what can be best described as sign language because my French, like my kitchen skills, was totally atrocious.

The memories of those carefree, younger days spent in France have inspired me to try out this foolproof recipe. You can't go wrong with an apple cake really, and this one is so easy you may be able to do it blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back. But why make life harder for yourself?

I called it the apple pie cake because while it uses a cake batter, the apples are stacked up neatly inside the the way you'd do it if it was in an apple pie. The recipe is an adaptation of Dorie Greenspan's Marie-Hélène’s Apple Cake, except that I used spelt flour instead of all purpose, and olive oil instead of butter (and I've adjusted the measurements too).

The cake is incredibly soft and moist, almost pudding-like and on the brink of fragility because the scant batter held up the apples just so. The spelt and olive oil may have something to do with this tenderest of textures, but the densely stacked up apple slices sure did their bit too. It's lovely eaten fresh, but taste even better the next day. Definitely a go-to cake - both to bake and eat - after a long day when nothing seems to go as planned!

 

Spelt Apple Pie Cake

Ingredients:

1½ cups spelt flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

4 large apples (if you can, choose 4 different kinds)

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

10 tablespoons virgin olive oil

Icing sugar, to dust

Method:

1.Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 175C/350F. Butter an 8-inch springform pan and put it on a baking sheet (I used a silicone flower mold that was easy to remove).

2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in small bowl.

3. Peel the apples and remove the cores. Slice the apples sideways into ½ cm thick round slices, with a hole in the middle where the core used to be.

4. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk until they’re foamy. Add in the sugar and vanilla and whisk for a minute or so to blend. Whisk in half the flour and when it is incorporated, add half the olive oil, followed by the rest of the flour and the remaining olive oil, mixing gently after each addition so that you have a smooth, rather thick batter. Spoon a layer of the batter into the base of the pan, then arrange a layer of apples on top. Repeat until you run out of batter and apples (the batter layers will have to be thin as there isn’t much of it), end with batter layer. Press down gently on the apples with the spatula so that the top layer is fairly even.

5. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the top of the cake is golden brown and a knife inserted deep into the center comes out clean; the cake may pull away from the sides of the pan. Transfer to a cooling rack and let rest for 5 minutes.

6. Carefully run a blunt knife around the edges of the cake and remove the sides of the springform pan. (Open the springform slowly, and before it’s fully opened, make sure there aren’t any apples stuck to it.) Allow the cake to cool until it is just slightly warm or at room temperature. If you want to remove the cake from the bottom of the springform pan, wait until the cake is almost cooled, then run a long spatula between the cake and the pan, cover the top of the cake with a piece of parchment or wax paper, and invert it onto a rack. Carefully remove the bottom of the pan and turn the cake over onto a serving dish. Once completely cooled, dust icing sugar on top. The cake can be served warm or at room temperature and actually tastes better the next day.

Goji Berry Tart with Nutella and Spelt Crust

May you eat an unfamiliar dessert in a strange land at least once every three years.
May you wake up... and start dancing while you're still half-asleep.
May you spray-paint Rilke poems as graffiti on highway overpasses...
May you learn to identify by name 20 flowers, 15 trees, 10 clouds, and one extrasolar planet...
May you dream of taking a trip to the moon in a gondola powered by firecrackers and wild swans.

Rob Brezsny

 

Okay, for my very first recipe of the year, I turned to dessert which is my favorite course, of course! I wanted to bake with an unusual ingredient (for me, at least) and that is goji berries. They're commonly available everywhere now, especially in health stores, so why did I say they were unusual? Well, I haven't come across many desserts that have incorporated their flavors fully, they are usually just sprinkled onto/into the dish. That's something that begs to be rectified and I want to do it here, today.

Anyway, have you ever had goji berry custard tarts before? I mean, actual goji berries (or less benignly known as wolfberries) blended into a custard and hiding underneath it a pleasant dollop of Nutella? And what would you think if all that pink custard was contained in a crust made from spelt flour? Because that's exactly what I made.

 I love that you can still spot the husks in the spelt flour!

A few years back, the benefits of goji berries were impressed upon us when they were commercially touted as a superfood. As a premium health drink, goji is an expensive investment towards a superfunctioning body, however nowadays I see the dried berries being sold at supermarkets everywhere at reasonable prices. We normally consume them as a crunchy snack (better than a bag of crisps, hey!) or else we brew them in soups or as hot drinks.

In fact, goji berries have been used for 6,000 years by herbalists in China, Tibet and India to promote everything from circulation to longevity. There’s even an unsupported marketing claim that a man in China who consumed goji berries daily had lived to be 252 years old. Firstly, unless you want to be Rob Pattinson’s eternal squeeze (wolfberry, hello), who really wants to live that long? And secondly, the addition of Nutella to this recipe will quickly whittle away 200 out of that 252 years… so much for longevity!

As for the crust, I've seen a few baking recipes floating around that use spelt flour. Spelt apparently contains more protein than wheat, and the protein in spelt is easier to digest. Always one for helping my body along, I was curious to give it a try. While aisle-surfing at the supermarket the other day, I'd spotted spelt flour on the shelves, so of course I grabbed a bag to take home.

This spelt crust certainly lived up to my expectations, which doesn't mean anything considering I had none to begin with. It was nutty in flavor and the spelt provided a cookie like quality, crisp-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside, to the crust which I found simply delightful. It’s a surprisingly apt companion to the subtly sweet, tarty (somewhere between a cherry and a cranberry), unusual taste of goji. To be completely honest, you can omit the Nutella because its distinctive flavor is a distraction from the goji. But I wanted to include Nutella this time because let's face it, having Nutella around (in anything, even just sitting quietly in its jar!) makes the heart beat faster... Don't you think?

 

Okay, here's my overall verdict on the tart:

Spelt crust - thumbs up, nutty and super-scrumptious!

Goji custard filling - love the pinkish-turned-terracotta color after baking, and the fact that you can still taste the tartness of the berries amidst the swirl of vanilla and custard. The goji as a garnish provided a refreshing pop as you bite into the tart.

Nutella - hmm.. nommm... I'm sure there's a Nutella heaven out there somewhere!

By the way, if you didn't already know, I have a giveaway going on here. The closing date for entries is tomorrow, 5 January, so do check it out if you're at all interested.

Goji Berry Tart with Nutella and Spelt Crust

Makes six 3-inch tarts

Ingredients:

Spelt Crust

300g wholemeal spelt flour (stoneground)

125g cold butter, chopped into cubes

100g caster sugar

1 egg

Goji Custard Filling

1/2 cup dried goji berries, soaked in water for 20 mins

1 cup milk

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1teaspoon vanilla extract

6 tablespoons Nutella

Method:

1. Make the crust first: in a bowl, rub the cold butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar. Make a well in the center of the mixture, add egg and gently knead the flour into a pastry ball. Spelt flour is very sticky to work with, so if you find the dough too sticky after adding the egg, just sprinkle extra spelt flour over the flour until it no longer sticks to your hands. Be careful not to overwork the dough. (At this point, you can

2. Preheat oven to 200C. Divide dough into 6 balls, take one and press onto the base and sides of a 3-inch tart pan (1-in deep) to form the crust. Repeat with the rest of the dough balls. Prick the base of the crust with a fork several times to release hot air while baking.

3. Place tart pans in the oven and immediately turn oven temperature down to 175C. Bake for 15 minutes.

4. In the meantime, prepare the filling. Drain the soaked goji berries, take about 1/2 cup of these and place in the blender with milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla. Leave some berries for garnishing (after soaking, the berries will expand and you'll have more than 1/2 cup). Process until thoroughly blended. Drain the mixture into a bowl using a fine sieve. This removes the goji seeds.

5. After 15 minutes, remove the semi-cooked spelt crust from the oven. Spoon a tablespoonful of Nutella into each crust (you can flatten the dollop slightly with your spoon). Then carefully pour the goji custard into the crust, filling it until just below the rim of the crust. Sprinkle some goji berries on top, they will sink slightly during baking. You can also garnish tarts with the soaked berries after baking, this looks more attractive but doesn't alter the taste in any way.

6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until custard is just set. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a rack for about 10 minutes. Turn tarts out of pans and garnish with soaked goji berries, if you wish.