Pear Macadamia Tarts

This month’s Sweet Adventure Blog Hop is celebrating Seasonal Produce.

Why is eating seasonal so important? As JJ from 84th and 3rd and the co- founder of Seasonal Sunday Lunch says: “Seasonal food is better for our taste buds, our wallets, our health and the environment, but in this on-demand day and age many of us have forgotten about, or never knew, times when we ate according to the seasons…”.

I must admit, until recently I’d never really made a conscious effort to eat seasonally. My only consideration was the the big hit on your wallet if you buy cherries in July. A few weeks ago we made the switch from buying majority of our food from the supermarket to trying a direct from the farmer delivery service.

Mr Sticky and I are using Aussie Farmers Direct for our  weekly fruit and vegetable box, meat, eggs, milk and bakery goods. This isn’t a sponsored post – I just really like the service and products from Aussie Farmers Direct! I totally love that a man comes in the dead of night or while we’re at work and leaves a little surprise of deliciousness for us. We’ve found the quality of the food is very good, it’s the same cost as the big supermarkets, there’s no delivery fee and I don’t have to go anywhere! SCORE.

We have been enjoying a weekly fruit and vegetable box that’s the best of the seasonal goodies – at the moment that means japanese pumpkins, avocado, mandarins, pears, apples and much more. To decide what I was going to make for this month’s hop, I went straight to the box and used the juicy and beautiful pears. I was also fortunate to be gifted some macadamias from Australian Macadamias. A match made in heaven? You can be the judge.

Pear Macadamia Tarts

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

45 mins

 

Recipe adapted from Australian Good Taste August 2002 p12.

Author: the sticky and sweet

Recipe type: Tart

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 125g unsalted butter, room temperature
• ½ cup caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup self raising flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• ½ cup ground macadamias
• 2 pears, peeled, quartered, cored and sliced thinly
• 1 cup macadamias, roughly chopped into large chunks

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees (fan forced oven). Grease 4 x 12cm tart pans with removable bases with melted butter or margarine and place them to a baking tray.
2. Using an electric beater, cream unsalted butter and caster sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition.
3. Fold in flour, spices and ground macadamias in stages. Mix with spoon or spatula until just combined.
4. Spoon half of mixture into prepared pans. Smooth mixture across the pan with the back of the spoon so that it is even. Place pear slices over mixture so they are in one layer, slightly overlapping. Spoon the rest of the mixture evenly across the pans. Smooth the top then sprinkle the chopped macadamias across the top.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden on top and a skewer poked into tarts comes out clean.
6. Rest for 5 minutes and then transfer pans to a cooling rack to cool further. When the pans have cooled and you are able to touch, remove the metal pans and serve warm.

Notes

To make ground macadamias, process the macadamias in a food processor for about 1 minute, or until the mixture looks like almond meal. You need to be careful not to process for too long or the macadamia mixture will get too warm and turn into a paste. Don’t like pears? Swap for apples, apricots or rhubarb. Don’t like macadamias? Swap for almonds, pecans or hazelnuts. You can swap to one large tart pan instead of individual tarts, you will need to adjust the baking time.

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I served these Pear Macadamia Tarts with Chobani Pear Yoghurt. You could also serve with ice cream, cream or just a light dusting of icing sugar.

Check out the other seasonal produce inspired sweet treats.