I had been eyeing Food & Wine's Apricot, Almond, and Brown Butter Tart since April. It's taken me this long to find a reason to make it. Only, I didn't really make it but used it as a stepping-off point. Dried apricots are not high on my list of things I like to eat, so I immediately purged them from the ingredients. I thought raspberries (and nectarines) would be much tastier.
(Note: Please ignore the nectarines in the picture below. I bought what I thought were firm, just ripe nectarines at Whole Foods. I got them home, cut into them, and found the insides to be all mush. They were completely unusable, so I had to stick with just raspberries. If you find nice nectarines, I think a little wedge nestled with each raspberry would be delicious.)
Besides switching out the dried apricots for raspberries, I altered the size of the tart. I have an obsession with mini foods and thought I'd love to turn the tart into tartlets.
And lastly, I read through the crust preparation and decided it was much too complicated and time-intensive, and I didn't want to do all that work. After all, it was a Friday night. I was tired from working all week, out of sorts because of the neverending rain, and eager to make these sweet treats.
It just so turns out that the June 2009 issue of Bon Appetit holds a recipe for a Brown Butter Raspberry Tart, and the crust for that looked much easier to prepare. So I used my own ideas of what I wanted this dessert to be and both of these recipes and came up with some fabulous mini treats.
When I made this, I had way too much filling as a result of combining the two different recipes, so the ingredients for the filling below have been halved. You should end up with just the right amount (or maybe still a little too much but not nearly as much as I had). The halved version has not been tested, but I don't usually run into problems halving things like this.
Raspberry Brown Butter Tartlets (adapted from Food & Wine's Apricot, Almond, and Brown Butter Tart and Bon Appetit's Brown Butter Raspberry Tart)
Printable version
Ingredients
Crust
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
pinch salt
Filling
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons slivered almonds
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise, seeds scraped and reserved
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons confectioner's sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
24 ripe raspberries
Preparation
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 24 mini muffin cups with butter.
With a rubber spatula, mix melted butter, sugar, and vanilla in medium bowl. Add flour and salt, and stir until incorporated.
Taking small scoopfuls, push dough into bottoms and up sides of muffin cups. Don't overdo it on your first ones or you'll run out. There's just enough to nicely coat all 24.
Bake in preheated oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until slightly golden on edges. Set aside.
To make filling:
Toast almonds and set aside to cool.
In small saucepan (preferably with a light-colored bottom if you have one), cook the butter over medium heat with the vanilla seeds until browned.
While the butter is cooking, if you haven't already washed them, you should rinse and drain the raspberries, and then lay them on a paper towel to dry.
Pulse toasted almonds, confectioner's sugar, flour, and salt in food processor. (I have a small food processor, so I switched at this point and used my Kitchen Aid, but if you have a large enough food processor, you can finish adding the rest of the ingredients there.)
In Kitchen Aid mixer, combine eggs and almond extract. Add half of flour mixture. Mix well. The add half of browned butter and mix well. Alternate adding remaining flour and remaining brown butter, mixing well after each addition.
I found it easiest to use a round tablespoon for this next part. Scoop filling into the baked crusts, filling just to the top. They may look like they're going to spill over, but somehow they don't.
Place a raspberry on top of the filling in each mini muffin cup.
Bake 10-15 minutes in 375-degree oven, or until tarts are golden on edges and just slightly moist around the raspberries.
Let tarts cool in pan on a rack for a couple minutes, then use a sharp knife to gently lift the tarts and tilt them on their sides. After they cool for a few minutes longer, you can take them out of the pan and cool them right on the rack.
Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar, if desired.
And then eat! My boyfriend and I had lunch with some friends on Saturday. I brought these little tarts, and they were well received. Half the reason I've gotten this post up so quickly is my friend really wants the recipe! You get sweet, tart, crunchy, and chewy -- all packed in a tiny tartlet.
