Tarte bourdaloue
Named after the street of Paris where it was invented, this heavenly tarte will impress vegans and omnivores alike. It features pears poached in vanilla syrup and placed on almond cream layered on top of a traditional pâte sablée (sweet pastry dough). It is decadent, flavorful and is the perfect dessert to accompany a lean meal, such as a salad or a soup, or to eat with a cup of tea or coffee in the afternoon.
Recipe inspired from La France Végétalienne.
Ingredients
- Pâte sablée
- 190g white flour
- 75g raw sugar
- 30g almond meal
- 75g good quality margarine
- 40g water
- Almond cream
- 40g cashews, soaked for > 4h
- 100g almond meal
- 75g melted coconut oil
- 20g rhum
- Pears
- 720g pears (pick pears that are a small, firm, a little ripe but not too ripe either)
- 1 vanilla bean
- 100g raw sugar
Instructions
- Pâte sablée
- In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar and almond meal.
- Add the margarine cut into cubes to the mix. Mix with your hands to obtain a kind of "sandy" texture.
- Add the water, and mix again with your hands to shape everything together into a ball. Don't overwork the dough, lest it becomes crumbly later.
- Cover in a container or plastic wrap, and refrigerate while you prepare the rest.
- Pears
- Peel the pears and cut them in half length-wise. For each half pear, remove the core and the hard strip leading up to the top with a thin knife.
- Put the raw sugar in a large pan. Open the vanilla bean with a thin knife and scrape the inside directly into the pan with the sugar. You can also throw the bean itself in the mix, or keep it for another use (I put used, opened vanilla beans into my pantry jars containing sugar; over time, the sugar becomes flavoured with vanilla).
- Add some boiling water to the pan, and turn on heat until sugar is dissolved.
- Delicately place the pear halves in the pan, and add some more water to make sure the pears are immersed almost to the top.
- Let the pears poach on one side for ~10-15 min, and turn them around. Let the other half poach for another 10-15 min.
- Take the poached pears out of the pan, and place them on a shallow bowl plate. They will keep exuding some juice as they rest, so make sure your bowl plate has some depth to keep it from leaking out.
- Keep the heat on, and reduce until you obtain a thick, vanilla-infused syrup. Turn off heat, and while still hot, pour the syrup into a small jar. You can use this syrup in the fridge, and use it just like you would maple syrup, to pour on pancakes, to sweeten plain yogurt, or to pour over fresh fruits.
- Almond cream.
- Take the pâte sablée out of the fridge to let it warm a bit a room temperature while you prepare the cream.
- Drain the soaked cashews, and blend them in a little bit of water with an immersion blender. Don't put too much water or the cashew cream will be too thin and liquefy the almond cream.
- In a bowl, mix the almond meal, sugar, melted coconut oil. and cashew cream.
- Assembly
- Turn on the oven at 180°C (fan on).
- Flatten the dough into a circular shape on a parchment paper using a rolling pin. You may need to slightly flour the surface of the dough to avoid it sticking to the rolling pin.
- Grease a tarte dish with oil or margarine, and delicately place the rolled dough on top.
- Bake for ~10-15 min to harden the dough. This step is essential as baking the filling directly on the raw dough would yield a soggy tarte.
- Take the tarte out of the oven, and spread the almond at the bottom of it.
- Place the pears on the tarte, pressing them gently into the cream to immerse them as much as possible.
- Turn off the fan of the oven, and bake the tarte for another ~30 min. The cooking time will depen on your oven. The way I check whether it is cooked is by shaking the dish gently. If the center is still giggly, it means it needs to cook some more. If it no longer moves and it is nice and golden on top, it is ready!
- Let it completely cool down before slicing. Enjoy!