Walnut and Manuka Honey Tart with Orange Greek Yogurt: Pastry Panic, and why you shouldn’t stress the little things

Monday afternoon

Pastry should be made on a cold day.

Advice I’d probably heard, but had definitely not considered yesterday. It wasn’t even that hot, but the benchtop had been in the sun the whole day which is likely to have warmed things up somewhat.

Had I considered that, I may have been a little less stressed when trying to make the basic sweet pastry.

Having read over le recette a few days earlier, I saw basic sweet pastry and thought it would be another walk in the park like the pastry for the praline tart.

Well it wasn’t quite like that.

Carried on from Tuesday

ingredients mixed together without issue, but I noticed the texture was already different when I had a dough formed and the recipe was mentioning a paste. hmmmm. I refrigerated it for an hour or so, which should have been longer.

When it came time to rolling, I had more issues. No matter how much flour I kept adding, the pastry would stick to either the rolling pin or benchtop. It was definitely not as simple as I’d hoped.

It wouldn’t stay together long enough for me to place it into the tart tray so I just had to put strips in and push it into place, similar to how you might make a paper mache thing. Then it had a good couple of hours in the fridge in it’s tart shape.

I used all of the pastry which apparently you weren’t supposed to do, according to the recipe. So I was feeling pretty stressed at this point as I thought the pastry would be a disaster.

I took a break from the pastry and made the orange zest yoghurt, which was a breeze.

I baked it, and it came out crispyish but still soft in places. And then it started leaking fat. Another reminder to use less butter next time.

fat seepage. uh oh

The filling was a lot easier. Butter melted, added manuka honey, sugar and cream. Not toffee disasters like I had with the Praline tart. Chopped up the walnuts then mixed them in.

Then the two were combined.

Wednesday

Into the oven it went, but not before we found something that shouldn’t have been in the oven.

burnt and cracked after being left in the oven to dry. fortunately there’s a spare

Finally it could come out and it was really looking quite good.

The filling was a little wobbly, so it was left in the fridge for a while. I was off to see Godzilla so the rest of the family would be getting to try the tart before me.

When I came home (Godzilla was really good too) I had found they had already been into it. However they had forgotten to use the yoghurt! Well, I did not make that mistake. And the yoghurt really did make it. The tart is incredibly sweet, so the unsweetened yoghurt took away some of that but added a lovely orange flavour to it.

I took some photos of it on Monday morning too.

 

Quite happy with how the photos and the tart turned out. Despite the worries I had with the pastry It ended up being pretty good. A little sticky, but it does the job.

Sorry I have taken forever to get this up, I haven’t had a lot of time to write the last few days. Tonight will be a new recipe though, Mushroom, Gouda and Goat’s Cheese Galettes.

I’ve also remembered I will be house sitting for most of June, so I don’t know if I will be able to do any recipes while I’m away from home. We will see though, right now it’s all about the Galettes.