Pear & Almond Cream Tart
Here are some other great Desserts:
- Walnut Stuffed Prunes – Simple prunes recipe.
- Pistachio-Walnut Baklava Rolls – Delicious dessert rolls.
- Souffle Tarts – Shortbread tarts filled with plum butter.
Pear Frangipane Tart (Pear & Almond Cream Tart)
Flaky crust with a creamy almond filling topped with vanilla-infused pears and toasted almonds. A simple and delicious tart recipe.
Ingredients
Pate Sablee Crust
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 stick 113 g unsalted cold butter
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 small egg
Poached Pears**
- 6-7 Pears peeled and cored (Bosc works best)
- 3 cups water
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/2 cup Grand Marnier Amaretto or Apricot/Peach Liqueur
- 5 tablespoons vanilla extract
- 1 star anise optional
- 1 cinnamon quill optional
To make the Almond Cream/Filling (Frangipane)
- 125 g unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 cup ground almonds
- 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tsp almond extract
Instructions
To Make Sable Crust:
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Combine all the dry ingredients (1½ cups flour, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp salt) in a large bowl.
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Slice 1 stick cold butter into to the flour. Keep cutting until the chunks are about the size of a pea (or add everything to the blender and pulse until the chunks are pea-size).
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Add 1 egg and mix the ingredients together with a spoon. If using the blender, add the egg and process until the dough starts to stick together.
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Use your hands to kneed the dough until it barely starts to come together. Push the dough into a ball (it will be very crumbly, but that’s ok). Cover with plastic wrap. Flatten to make a disk.
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Refrigerate for about 1 hour. (Prepare the pears during this time).
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Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Shape it into a ball and roll it out between 2 layers of parchment paper or saran wrap, to about 3-4 mm thick (you could just flour your work surface really well and not use the parchment). Transfer into the 12 inch tart mold and pat it with your fingertips to fit it tightly inside the mold. Prick the dough with a fork.
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Refrigerate for 30 minutes or freeze for 15 minutes.
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Preheat the oven to 300F and bake the tart for about 15-20 minutes.
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Let cool on wire rack.
To make Poached Pears:
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In a large pot combine, 1 cup sugar, 3 cups water, 2 tbsp lemon juice, 5 tbsp vanilla extract, 1 star anise, 1/2 cup alcohol and 1 cinnamon quill. Bring to a boil.
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Place the peels & cored pears into the syrup and simmer for about 30 minutes. Let cool (I left the pears in the syrup overnight, which allowed the pears to be completely infused with vanilla).
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Once cool, remove pears from the syrup and and slice them thinly.
To make Frangipane:
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You can use either blanched or unblanched almond (with the dark part of the nut on or off).
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Put 3/4 cup almonds and 2 tsp flour into the bowl of a food processor and grind.
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In a bowl of an electric mixer beat, 125 g softened/room temperature butter and 1/2 cup sugar.
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Add 2 eggs one at a time and mix well between each addition.
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Add the ground up almond mixture. Mix until well combined.
Assembly
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Spoon the frangipane mixture into the tart and spread it around.
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Place the thinly sliced pears on top of the frangipane, making a circle, leaving about an inch space from the tarts edge.
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Sprinkle sliced almonds around the edge of the tart.
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Bake for additional 45 minutes, at 300F.
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Remove from the oven and let cool before serving.
Glaze
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While the tart is baking, reduce the leftover syrup/poaching liquid, until thickened (almost like honey).
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Brush the tart with this syrup as soon as it comes out of the oven.
Recipe Notes
You can use store-bought crust instead of making one yourself
*Instead of making the glaze, you can brush the tart with honey, heated jam, or alternatively sprinkle with powdered sugar.
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Marina | Let the Baking Begin
I made this tart today and I’m wondering if you’ve made an error on the oven temperature. 300 degrees F seems very low. It just doesn’t set in the time recommended.
Hi Deborah,
That is the right and temperature and time, but every oven is different and you might need to bake it for a couple minutes longer for the Frangipane filling to be baked through. The filling is sort of creamy though, so even when it bakes through, it does not harden in the time it bakes.
Check this post for another frangipane tart where you can see what the inside looks like, as well as step by step pictures to how to make it – https://letthebakingbegin.com/2014/11/french-almond-cream-pear-tart/
Thanks for the quick reply! Alas, I couldn’t get this tart to set at 300 degrees F, even with 15 minutes extra time in a well-calibrated oven. Not even close. In the end, I increased the temperature to 375, which is in the range of what other recipes recommend for frangipane (e.g., Epicurious, Bon Apetit, King Arthur Flour). The other recipe you pointed to in your reply calls for 350 degrees. It’s a delicious tart and one I’ll make again, but as an experienced baker I really do recommend increasing the temperature.
Deborah is right… 300F is not enough
In the below link, it says 350F (i guess that makes more sense given that every other website says 350 or more..)
https://letthebakingbegin.com/2014/11/french-almond-cream-pear-tart/
That being said – the tart tasted wonderful – just sad that the temperature was not right at all for me
So, I am allergic to tree nuts but this sounds amazing. Because I don’t cook with nuts I don’t know what would be of similar consistency as ground almonds. Any suggestions for a substitution?
Unfortunately I have no idea what you could substitute it with… sorry 🙁