Caramel-Nut Tart

I’ll start with Joanne Chang’s caramel-nut tart (Flour, p. 228). It’s built on a standard pâte sucrée (sweet tart dough) in a ten-inch tart shell:

Unlike a pâte brisée (regular pie dough), the pâte sucrée is made by the creaming method, and uses egg as the only liquid ingredient, like a cookie dough. (I provided nutrition information for this crust in the previous post, “Nutrition estimates for those pies“.) The filling is made from toasted whole hazelnuts, pistachios, sliced almonds, walnuts (I used leftover black walnuts), pecans, and dried cranberries:

The filling is held together with a standard sugar-and-cream caramel. The first time I tried it, something went wrong — perhaps the sugar wasn’t hot enough, or I had mismeasured it — because it turned into this watery light-brown liquid rather than proper caramel:

Luckily, I had enough experience making caramels of this type (like the Chocolate Caramel Walnut Tart) that I could immediately see something was wrong, and I had enough cream to try again. The second time around, it came out right:

There was actually quite a bit of filling left over:

I served this tart at our family Christmas Eve party, about which more later. Of course, I took the first slice!

Everyone who tried it (myself included) thought it was excellent. The caramel, which is flavored with orange peel in addition to the traditional vanilla, makes a lovely complement to the nuts and dried cranberries. Here’s my slice (with apologies for the strange white balance):

Nutrition

Note well: For ease of comparison, I am presenting this nutrition data on the basis of eight servings per pie. However, you probably don’t want servings that big! Also, the following summary assumes that the entire batch of filling fits in the tart shell; if, like me, you had a substantial amount of filling left over, this may significantly overstate the caloric content. (It should probably be baked in a 10½” tart pan rather than the 10″ pan called for in the recipe.)

Cranberry-Sage Pie

My second pie was Emily and Melissa Elsen’s “Cranberry-Sage Pie”, from The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book (p. 182). For some reason, I didn’t take any photos of the intermediate stages in making this pie. The sage is blended in the food processor with sugar until it is finely ground, and this is then added, along with other flavors and arrowroot, to the fresh cranberries, half of which have been chopped in the processor and half of which remained whole. In addition, a grated apple provides some natural pectin and tartness, and soaked dried cranberries add some texture. The whole mixture is bound with a beaten egg and then poured into an uncooked pâte brisée crust. More pastry is arranged in a lattice on top (the Elsens say that a solid top, or a streusel, can be used as well, but I don’t find the lattice to be any more difficult, and it looks nicer that way). Here’s the result:

You can see that my lattice is a bit uneven. However, egg wash and a sprinkling of Demerara sugar cover a multitude of sins when it comes to pie baking, so nobody else seemed to notice. I served this pie at Christmas dinner. My grandmother (not having been warned) bought a couple of pies from a local bakery, which barely got touched, and my aunt Louise brought a raisin pie, so there was more than enough to go around. I was exceedingly pleased with how this pie turned out, and would absolutely make it again, despite the effort of picking over the fresh cranberries. You’ll probably want to make it, too, once you see the nutrition data! Here’s the usual cross-section:

And a single slice:

Because there were not nearly so many people at Christmas dinner, I ended up bringing home about half of this pie. Everyone who tried it, however, liked it, and I’m sure when I pull the rest out of the freezer some time next month, it won’t last very long at all, despite the inevitable damage freezing does to fruit. And the best thing is, despite being a double-crust pie, it’s really not that bad for you!

Nutrition

Assumes that two whole crusts are used, with no pastry left over. I had about a quarter of a crust left over after trimming the bottom crust and making the lattice.

Egg ‘n’ Grogg Pie

Like I said above, this is just a rum-flavored egg custard in a gingersnap crumb crust; the recipe is from The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book (p. 185), immediately following the cranberry-sage pie, and it looked like an easy add-on that should please a lot of rum-drinking relatives. It did require one unusual ingredient (vanilla paste), which I probably shouldn’t have bothered with given the quantity called for (and the fact that I’ve never seen a recipe calling for vanilla paste before — maybe I can make a few gallons of ice cream, a bunch of pound cakes or something to use up the rest of the bottle).

I have never had a great result with the Elsens’ crumb crusts, and this time was no exception. Perhaps I really need to follow their advice and buy a metal pie plate (are they a different size?) rather than the standard Pyrex plates I normally use (and have plenty of). Or maybe the recipe just doesn’t call for enough crumbs to make the crust as thick as I would like. (I’ve been using Mi-Del “Swedish style” gingersnaps — should I try a different brand?) The prepared crust looks OK at first glance:

But it’s clear on closer inspection that there are numerous holes and cracks in the bottom. I held it up to the light to make it clear in this photograph:

Crumbs are nice and dense around the rim, but not nearly thick enough on the bottom. (The recipe calls for a cup of crumbs, which is not at all helpful; I measured that out to be 135 grams, but since cookie crumbs can be compacted, it’s possible that I needed another ounce or more. For what it’s worth, a standard cup of flour is 140 g (5 oz), and I’m not sure whether I should have expected gingersnap crumbs to be more or less dense than flour.) In any event, the custard covers up most of the flaws in the crust:

Out of an abundance of caution, I took the pie out a few minutes too early. All pies will continue to cook while cooling down, but this one could have used maybe five more minutes in the oven to fully set the custard, as you can see in this view (from Christmas Eve) after the first slice was served:

Since I did not intend to bring any of it home (or indeed to eat more than a spoonful), I did not prepare nutrition data for this pie.