Monday, December 1, 2014

BB: Frozen Pecan Tart

Frozen Pecan Tart
Baked 11/25/14

My pie contribution to the Thanksgiving pie collection was this one from the Baking Bible, intended to be served frozen. It's a pâte sucrée (sweet cookie tart crust) with a riff on pecan pie filling...and a lot less of the filling to the amount of pecans. That's all to the good for me, as the thicker traditional pecan pie is something I can only take in very small slices. The ratio here is much more to my liking.

I struggled with the crust, despite the promising technique of laying the rolled-out crust over an 8-inch cake pan to help shape it, then placing the 9.5-inch tart pan on top and flipping it all together before finishing the easing of the crust into the pan. All that seems to go fine, but my bad luck(?) (poor skills? who knows!) with blind-baking continue, and my baked crust had cracks all over. I patched a few with scraps of unbaked dough when the pie weights came out, but still had cracks most of the way around the sides and some in the middle. I painted a lot of them with dark chocolate (knowing I planned to do a chocolate drizzle), but still had a lot of leakage of the filling. It made getting the tart off the tart pan base rather....challenging.

After the pie cooled and was detached from the pan and base, it got a chocolate lace topping (a drizzle of ganache, that is) before being frozen. It was fine served frozen though the flavors weren't pronounced, and I wonder if it would do as well or better at room temperature. Still, it was very nice to have this pie all prepared and out of the way, just needing to be pulled out and sliced before dessert.

I didn't get much feedback from the rest of the family beyond "it was very good"--our Thanksgiving pie race is always won by the Black Bottom Pie, and this year was no exception. The rest, even a Frozen Pecan Tart from Rose, just become "the other pies", I'm afraid.

Frozen Pecan TartFrozen Pecan TartFrozen Pecan Tart

8 comments:

  1. Nancy, your pecan tart looked amazing! Wish i could have a slice so I know if should make it or not. LOL! Pecans so expensive here, so it is very sad to have to throw away the entire pie if we don't like it.

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  2. I like how you added the chocolate, it was not in the lattice patter, and I think it looked prettier. I can see where this pie will get lost in a sea of pies at thanksgiving.

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  3. Nancy: It looked great, if your luck or skills are lacking, they sure don't show in the photos. You did such a nice job on making the nuts so tidy--my attempt at that went out the window once I used up all the pretty ones! By that time I was getting tired anyway and ready to get off my feet. We loved it frozen, loved it un-frozen too. Wishing you the very best of 2015--Michele

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  4. Your tart looks great. I just had to google the black bottom pie. I'm fascinated by the number of pies in North Amerivan cuisine - and the popularity of them. They also have great names, especially the southern ones.

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  5. bummer about the cracks, but painting the bottom with dark chocolate seems like a good fix. i love how nicely all your nuts are arraigned!

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  6. ב''ה

    Looks great!

    Sorry you had trouble.

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  7. Cracks or not, it looks gorgeous! I rather like the idea of painting the entire bottom with chocolate before adding the filling and will make a note. So who makes the Black Bottom pie?

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    1. I have made the Black Bottom Pie, but when my older brother is here, he does it. With the help of his younger son, usually...

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