An Elegant Dessert

Let's face it: pie is homey. It's comfort food, something that your grandmother could whip up and serve after a family dinner. Pie in our culture shows up on the "family" holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and 4th of July.

There are problems with elevating pie into a finer dessert. Presentation is so vitally important for high-end desserts. Cupcakes are easy to present with flair, with their ever present buttercream that is so simple to pipe attractively, and the ease of adding color and accents to the top of the cupcake. Pie, on the other hand, tends to be always presented in one way: in a wedge. It has very natural colors, which are beautiful, in a homey sort of way.

Even when cut, pie tends to ooze out around the edges, fruit or custard or nut filling falling away in a sweet pool of flavor. Some of the very best pies I've made, pies that I would eat on my deathbed, still present as desserts a home cook could make. Heck, they're desserts a home cook did make.

Consider this: somehow a seasonal berry crumble, which is berries cooked in a deep dish with an oat/butter/sugar topping, has somehow become a staple of restaurant dessert menus, but pie has not. You can make a berry crumble look amazingly appealing, and pie is, well, just pie.

This tart, though, this is an elegant dessert. Another stunning dessert from "Classic Home Desserts," by Richard Sax, this nut tart is perfect for the end of a fine meal.

While many of our nut pies have become like pecan pie, nuts immersed in a super-sweet filling made from sugar, eggs, and corn syrup, this nut tart is mostly nuts. It cuts into clean wedges, while the chocolate drizzle retains its lines. The toffee-like binding sings with honey and bourbon. Despite all the sugar and cream in the filling, it's not terribly sweet. Don't skip the chocolate accents on top, pipe them with a pastry bag and a small round tip for a refined look. Serve it with a tiny shot of intense espresso at the conclusion of your next dinner party. This nut tart is the little black dress of desserts: always appropriate, understated, and appreciated. Yum.

Completely on a side note, my standard pie crust recipe is evolving. Maybe I'll write a complete post about it someday. But here is what has worked the best for me most recently. It's all in the technique.

Nut Tart 

Crust:

1 ½ C. AP flour
1 tsp. sugar
½ tsp. salt
6 Tbsp. butter, cold and cut into small pats
2 Tbsp. shortening, cold and cut into small pats
4-5 ½ Tbsp. cold water

Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Toss the butter and shortening with the flour mixture, coating each piece of butter or shortening with flour. Refrigerate ten minutes or so. Pour the mixture out onto a clean counter. Roll a rolling pin over it, flattening the butter and shortening. Scrape the mixture back into a pile, roll it out again. Continue scraping into a pile and rolling out until you have flakes of butter and shortening, like large paint flakes. The butter needs to remain cold to keep the right finished texture, so if you're ever worried about it getting too warm, throw it back in the fridge for ten minutes or so. Mix with the water and briefly knead into a dough. If you need more water (I always do,) add it a very little bit at a time. When you have a dough, press it into a small ball and refrigerate for at least a half an hour.

Pre-heat your oven to 400°. Roll the dough out and fit it into a tart pan. (A tart pan has lower sides than a pie pan, and often has a removable bottom.) Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the foil, bake another five minutes. Reduce the oven temp to 350°. Cool the pie crust on a wire rack.

Filling:

⅓ C. packed light brown sugar
1 Tbsp. honey
⅔ stick butter
2 Tbsp. + 2 tsp. heavy cream
1 C. chopped walnuts
½ C. chopped almonds
½ C. chopped pecans
1 ½ tsp. bourbon
¾ tsp. vanilla

Combine brown sugar, honey, butter, and cream and bring to a boil over low heat. Add the chopped nuts, the bourbon, and the vanilla. Pour the filling into the partially baked crust.

Bake at 350° for about 15-20 minutes. The center should be a little wobbly, but not too much.

Drizzle:

1 ½ oz. fine semi-sweet chocolate (get the good stuff out, the flavor really matters.)
2 Tbsp. heavy cream
1 Tbsp. butter

Melt together either in a small saucepan or in a heatproof bowl in a microwave. Drizzle on the cooled pie.