Okay, so I think that after a few weeks of faffing and chaos, I’m finally all caught up with my work AND very importantly, the Bake Off Series! This week’s theme was pastry week, which I was particularly looking forward to! I love making things like tarts, pies and other pastry based dishes. This is one of my favourite times of year for so many reasons- one of which being, that there’s an abundance of fresh figs in the supermarkets! I remember I first started to get into them about 4 years ago and just became completely obsessed! I’ve recently discovered that they’re also rather delicious when roasted in the oven with a little drizzle of honey!
They become all soft and caramelised, which pairs perfectly against the crisp pastry casing. I used to really struggle to master home made & free from pastries, so thankfully my skills seem to have improved. They would always tend to be too dry, too oily, too crumbly, too soggy or just end up burning around the edges. And to top it off, I’ve added a crumble topping rather than pastry because.. well, I just love crumble and think that this is just waaaaay better! It also means that you don’t have to spend time cutting out fancy, delicate patterns- which I find a bit of a faff personally. I’ve also tried something a little different with the pastry and added in some peanut butter. This not only helps to bind everything together, but also helps to create that smooth, buttery effect and adds a slightly more salty kick to contract with the sweetness of the figs!
This is the perfect winter warming dessert to serve after dinner, or enjoy with a cosy cup of tea in the afternoon. It’s fairly straight forward to make and I actually didn’t use a food processor or any fancy equipment for this, which is quite nice sometimes just to take things back to basics and keep it simple! Although I literally LOVE my food processor and it’s definitely a kitchen staple that I would struggle to do without, I know that not everyone has access to these in their home kitchen, so I want to start trying to include more minimal equipment recipes!
Anyway.. I hope you enjoy this tart as much as I did and I’m already looking forward to tomorrows Bake Off episode so I can get started on the next creation!
Honey Roasted Fig Crumble Tart
Ingredients
Pastry:
- Tbsp honey or other liquid sweetener of choice
- 2 tbsp vegan butter
- 3/4 cup GF flour
- 1/4 cup ground almonds
- Tbsp Smooth Peanut butter- I used Pic's
Filling:
- 5 fresh figs
- Honey to drizzle
Peanut Butter Sauce:
- 2 Tbsp Smooth Peanut butter
- Tbsp Honey or other sweetener of choice
- Non-dairy milk
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 180c and lightly grease a 20cm loose bottom tin with a little vegan butter or coconut oil.
- To make the pastry, combine the vegan butter, peanut butter and date syrup and mix until well combined.
- Add in the dry ingredients and beat together to form a dough.
- Take 3/4 of the dough and press this into the base of the tin and around the sides. Pop this into the oven for around 10 minutes to bake until golden.
- Slice the figs into 1/4 pieces and set aside.
- Once the tart base has been cooking for 10 minutes, remove from the oven and layer the figs onto the base and add a drizzle of honey all over.
- Take the remaining pastry mixture and crumble this on top. Pop the tart back into the oven to bake for 15-20 minutes. You want the topping to be nicely golden and the figs will be beautiful caramelised and juicy.
- Meanwhile, for the peanut butter sauce, combine the peanut butter, sweetener of choice and gradually add in splashes of milk whilst mixing until you reach a pourable consistency.
- Allow to cool slightly before cutting into portions and serving with a generous drizzle of the sauce!
