Walnut and Honey Tart

Walnut and Honey Tart

Opening Walnuts

Opening Walnuts

Last autumn Gosia went pretty crazy about picking her own walnuts. Now I’ve got nothing against foraging, but she’d spend day after day in the local park filling up buckets with so many walnuts I highly doubt we’ll ever get around to using them all.

This is the first dish we’ve made with the aforementioned nuts. We’d been watching River Cottage over Christmas when Hugh baked a Walnut and Honey Tart which looked absolutely delicious; ours – which I hope will also be delicious – is in the oven as I type this.

Walnut and Honey Tart

Walnut and Honey Tart

Christmas came and went so quickly this year we just didn’t have time to bake all of the things we’d hoped to; a few cakes made it to the table (such as the Flourless Chocolate Cake I made as my sister’s present), but little more than that. Regardless, Santa treated me nicely with food related gifts such as truffle oil / truffles, caviar, and cookbooks.

Now I only have 12 months to wait until the next one…

Print this Recipe

Recipe: Walnut and Honey Tart

Summary: This walnut and honey tart is deliciously sticky and gooey with crumbly pastry. What could be better?

Ingredients

  • For The Pastry:
  • 400g flour, chilled
  • 250g butter, chilled
  • 100g sugar, chilled
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 large egg
  • For The Filling:
  • 250g sugar
  • 200ml double cream
  • 2 tbsp good honey
  • 200g roughly chopped walnuts

Method

  1. Pre heat the oven to 180c / 355f.
  2. Start your pastry similar to a crumble mix by pushing the butter into the flour. When this resembles breadcrumbs stir in the sugar and then the egg.
  3. Mix this all together with your hands and form a ball with the completed pastry; cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or so.
  4. Next make a caramel with the remaining sugar; heat it in a large frying pan on a medium heat, not stirring. As it begins to turn brown and melted you can give it a bit of a stir to help it melt.
  5. Once it is all melted turn off the heat and immediately pour in the cream, stirring as you do so. Once this is mixed in add the honey again stirring well. Finally, stir in the walnuts.
  6. Now it’s time to line the pastry tin. If you’ve done this before you’ll know how, but basically roll out and cut a circle for the base then press this into place. Next roll out the sides, pressing these both into place and down against the base to provide a seal. Finally roll out a circle for the top.
  7. Fill the now prepared tart case with the filling and place the pastry lid on top, pressing against the sides to seal.
  8. Place into the oven for 15 minutes, then poke several holes into the top to allow the steam to escape. Return to the oven for approximately 20 minutes until golden, then remove.
  9. Allow to cool for just a couple of minutes and then remove from the case. Hugh recommends then returning it to the oven to crisp up the base but I found mine was cooked through OK; let your own judgement decide this.
  10. Enjoy with ice-cream or a drizzle of cream.

Quick notes

You could use shop bought pastry – this will turn out just fine, but short-crust really isn’t difficult to make from scratch.

Variations

Try replacing about 50g of the flour with ground almonds for a slightly different texture and taste. This is my staple method of making sweet short-crust.

Preparation time: 45 minute(s)

Cooking time: 45 minute(s)

Number of servings (yield): 12

Related posts: