macadamia nut tart with quinoa crust - an experiment

macadamia nut tart with quinoa crust - an experiment

• 28 May 2012

In my quest to make proper passover pastry (ppp) I did some reading on quinoa. The jury's still out on it's suitability for Passover but I still wanted to try making pastry using quinoa flour. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with quinoa. I like the grain but I find the flakes completely unpalatable. I was a bit worried that pastry made entirely from quinoa flour would be a bit too overpowering for my taste buds but I went ahead and made some anyway. I needed to use twice the amount of water suggested to make the pastry and rolling it out was quite hard work.



Now that I had pastry, what was I to do with it? I had macadamias in the cupboard, so I decided to make a macadamia nut tart. Essentially it's a pecan pie but you use macadamias rather than pecans and I added a teaspoon of grated orange rind to the mixture. I hoped the tart filling was sufficiently well flavoured to neutralise the 'quinoaness' of the pastry. The pastry browned really quickly so I had to take the tart out of the oven before the filling was completely set.



I took the tart into work and didn't say a word. I waited for someone to comment on the nutty taste of the pastry or the dark brown colour of the crust or the slightly runny filling, well anything really but no, nothing at all. They just ate it and said it was delicious. I've just had a slice and really it does taste delicious but next time I'd use a combination of flours in the pastry rather than just quinoa flour.



MACADAMIA NUT TART printable recipe
Pastry
1 cup Flour
60 grams cold butter
2 - 4 tablespoons water

Combine the butter and flour in a food processor. Gradually add sufficient water until a dough forms around the blade. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Roll out to fit a 20 - 23 cm pie tin or a rectangular tart tin then place in the fridge while preparing the filling.

Filling
3 eggs
½ cup light muscovado or brown sugar
1½ tablespoons cornflour
60 grams melted butter
1 cup corn or maple syrup
200g toasted unsalted macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon finely grated orange rind

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Combine the eggs, sugar, cornflour and the orange rind together. Stir in the syrup and the melted butter to form a smooth mixture. Place the toasted nuts over the base of the pastry case before carefully pouring the mixture over the nuts. 

Place the tin on a baking tray in case of drips then bake at 180ºC for 20 minutes before lowering the oven temperature to 160ºC. Bake for a further 20 minutes or until the filling is well browned and just set. Cool on a wire rack before serving with a dollop of cream, if you're brave!

I'll be back again on Wednesday with a shopshoot so I'll see you all again then. 

Bye for now,

Jillian