Tag: holiday treats

Pretty Pistachio Tart

Sweets

While I’ve often seen beautiful green pistachios gracing the top of ooey-gooey baklava in specialty mediterranean bakeries, I don’t ever recall seeing a pistachio tart recipe like this one on Epicurious. What a great alternative to your standard-issue pecan pie. (At least, that was my hope.) Unfortunately, my first effort didn’t come out very well. The filling was delicious, but the crust was lacking in flavor and cakey. I had hoped for buttery and flaky. But before I expand on that, here’s a quick overview of what’s involved:

Bowls filled with flour, an egg, sugar, and butter to make a tart crust.

Make the crust by blending 1 1/3 C flour, 1/4 C sugar, 1 egg, 4 Tbsp butter, 1 Tbsp water.

Pie dough pressed into a springform pan to make a tart.

Press the dough into a springform pan.

Little plates filled with pecans, eggs, pistachios, and brown sugar, alongside a bottle of vanilla and a small pan with two pats of butter.

Make the filling by stirring together: 3/4 C brown sugar, 2 large eggs, 2 Tbsp unsalted melted butter, 3/4 C chopped pistachios, 1 Tsp vanilla (the recipe calls for a vanilla bean, but I didn’t have one). I also didn’t have enough pistachios, so I partially subbed in pecans.

Pie filling poured into an uncooked pie shell.

Pour the filling into the shell. Arrange 1/2 C whole pistachios on the filling. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Remove foil and cook 15 minutes more. Cool for 10 minutes and remove from the pan.

A pistachio tart on a white plate.

As you can see, it’s a very pretty tart. I’m sure the issue of the mediocre crust can be fixed by using a different recipe combined with the filling from Epicurious. I think something more like a traditional shortbread cookie would do the trick. I’ll update this once I’ve found a good substitute and given it a try. For now, this shortbread tart shell recipe on Blossom to Stem looks very promising, especially since the author based it on some techniques from the queen of cookie baking, Alice Medrich. I swear her Cookies and Brownies book is foolproof. I think I’ve made every one of the recipes, and never had anything but absolute success. (Her big hack is that she always melts her butter before blending it into dry ingredients.) The result is crispier cookies with a wonderfully soft center.

If you get inspired to try this and decide to substitute the crust with a different recipe, let me know how it comes out. I do think there’s a really great idea here, especially for holiday entertaining.