Dulce-de-leche is one of the best ingredients to have up your sleeve for a show-stopping dessert. You can buy it ready made or just simmer a whole tin of condensed milk for 2 hours in boiling water, allow to cool and hey presto – you have a tin of the most amazing caramel just ready to be put into a dessert, or even just eaten on its own!
This dessert uses a sweet pastry base and some caramelised pears to to give some acidity against the dense, caramel and buttery pastry. As I refine this dish I think I would try to just grill the pears, or use slices of poached pears, to make it a little lighter; the dulce-de-leche has plenty of sweetness and the extra caramel on the pears is perhaps too much for some, although not the hungry taste-testers that ate this version! Give it a try and let me know in the comments how it goes.
Thanks for the inspiration to Liam Charles’s recipe on the guardian – and the measurements for the pastry – and to the bloggers ‘Top Nosh By Kate And Matt’ for the inspiration! The case will need to be ‘blind baked’, there is a very good demonstration of how to do this on youtube by a former bake-off finalist, who probably knows more than me, which was very helpful.
Enjoy!
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Loading...Ingredients
- For the pastry:
- 260g plain flour
- 130g cold butter, cubed
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 tablespoons icing sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- For the filling:
- 3 pears
- 2 tablespoons soft brown sugar, 50g butter
- condensed milk
- 15g pecan nuts
Instructions
To make the dulce-de-leche, simply put an unopened can of condensed milk into a saucepan and cover with boiling water. Simmer, covered, for 2 hours, always ensuring that you keep the water level topped up to cover the whole can. Soak in cold water for 10 minutes to cool.
To make the pastry, combine the flour, butter and cinnamon into a food processor. Begin to blend, adding the egg yolk and icing sugar. While blitzing, add a few tablespoons of water until the mixture begins to clump together as a dough-ball.
Empty the pasty onto a floured surface and bring it all together, kneading for a minute or so. Wrap in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Lightly grease a 23cm, loose-base flan tin and preheat the oven to 180º.
Take the pasty and roll out into a disc a little bigger than the flan tin; you will likely have some left-over for another sweet treat!
Carefully push the pastry into the flan tin and work into the base. Cut or press off any excess to leave the edge neat.
To 'blind bake' the flan case, line it with oven-proof cling film or baking paper and fill with baking beans, dried chickpeas, rice or similar. Bake for 10 minutes and remove. Take out the cling film and baking beans.
Spread the cooled dulce-de-leche all over the base of the tart.
To caramelise the pears, peel them and cut into half-cm slices. Add the brown sugar and butter to a pan and mix over a high heat until you have a caramel. Add the pears and cover in the caramel, cooking for around 3 minutes.
Arrange the pears on top of the dulce-de-leche. If they don't look too neat, don't worry, we'll hide it with the pecans 🙂
Cook for a further 15 minutes.
Remove from the heat and arrange the pecans on top in a pretty pattern. Cook for another 5 minutes to toast the pecan nuts.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Serve with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream or a drizzle of cream.
