Apricot-Pistachio Tart with Lemon-Olive Butter

le-beurre-bordier-recettes-la-maison-du-pain-tarte-abricots-2Recipe by La Maison du Pain

1 rue de la Vieille Boucherie, 35400 Saint-Malo, France

(only 50 meters from the Maison du Beurre, our historic shop)

Crédit photographique © Stéphane Maillard

Serves 6
Preparation: 30 min
Cooking Time: 30 min
Rest Time: 2 h

Crust:

  • 225 g / 1 cup Bordier lemon-olive oil butter
  • 200 / 7 oz sugar
  • 90 g / 1/3 cup egg yolks
  • 300 g 10 ½ oz flour
  • 5 g / a pinch salt
  • 12 g / 2 ½ tsp baking powder

Custard:

  • 300 g / 10 ½ oz milk
  • 60 g / 4 tbl sugar
  • 50 g / 1 ¾ oz liquid cream, 35% butterfat content
  • 2 eggs
  • 20 g / 1 1/3 tbl corn starch
  • 25 g / 5 tsp (Sevarom) pistachio paste
  • 500 g / 17 ½ oz apricots, pitted
  • 100 g / 3 ½ oz sugar
  • Unsalted pistachios, chopped

Preparation:

Crust

  1. Knead the lemon-olive oil butter with the sugar.
  2. Fold in the egg yolks.
  3. Blend evenly, then fold in the flour, salt and baking powder.
  4. Mix the dough, roll into a ball and wrap in plastic before letting it sit for 2 hours in the refrigerator.

Custard

  1. Scald the milk than add the sugar and cream, making sure that it contains 35% butterfat.
  2. Separately, beat the eggs, then add the corn starch and cold milk.
  3. When the milk begins to simmer, slowly add the egg-corn starch-milk mixture into the first mixture.
  4. Cover the cream with plastic wrap taking care to stick it directly on the surface of the custard.  Refrigerate.
  5. Once chilled, add the pistachio paste.

 Assembly

  1. Roll the dough out as thinly as possible.  Cut out a disk the same size as the diameter of a greased straight sided tart pan (or baking circle). It is a Breton style crust, which means that it covers only the bottom of the tart pan, not the sides.
  2. Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F.  Refrigerate the rolled out dough for 15 minutes before baking it for another 15 minutes to the desired brownness and crustiness.
  3. Once baked, let cool, then turn out of the mold carefully.  The crust will be quite brittle.
  4. Garnish with the cold custard with a pastry bag set with a wide nozzle.  Squeeze out the custard in a circular motion, making sure to leave 1 cm / ¾ inch from the edge of the crust without any custard.
  5. For the apricots, place a Flexipan, silicon baking sheet or parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
  6. Sprinkle a generous layer of sugar over the covered cookie sheet, and place the apricots, pitted and sliced in two, cut side down on the layer of sugar.  Bake at 220°C / 425°F.  Remove when the inside of the apricots has lightly caramelized on the sugar.
  7. Remove and let cool.
  8. Place the apricots on the custard sliced side up moving from the inside to the outside.

Our tip:  Place a peeled pistachio in the center of each apricot, and in the middle of the tart, the chopped pistachios.