Vegan Sweets

We had the Very Tolerant Boyfriend’s parents to stay last weekend.  As they are his parents the Very Tolerant Boyfriend did most of the cooking.  He produced a beautiful tea smoked duck breast with fondant potatoes and wilted spinach.  He’s a pretty good cook.  

I offered to make a dessert, which is less easy than it sounds as the Very Tolerant Boyfriend’s mother is quite intolerant to a lot of food.  These include but are not limited to wheat, gluten, yeast, dairy, eggs, chocolate and pork.  So that kind of excludes most of my tried and tested “show off and impress people desserts”. 
I figured that it was going to have to be a vegan dessert, so I spent a couple of hours trawling through Pinterest.  You’d be surprised how many vegan desserts have chocolate in them; but finally I came up with the below.   

The recipe only included a list of ingredients, so I had to make up in the instructions.  It seems to have worked ok though.


Vegan Pear Tart Recipe (makes 4 small individual tarts)


crust:
1 1/2 cup gluten free flour
1/2 cup almond meal (ground almonds)
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
6~8 tablespoons melted coconut oil
2~3 tablespoons agave syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Mix the whole lot together, until a squidgy dough consistency.  Break into 4 pieces and push into the tins.  Line with foil and baking beans and bake blind for 10mins at 160C


filling:
2/3 cup almond meal
1 tablespoon gluten free flour
7 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons melted coconut oil
1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/8 teaspoons brandy
a few drops of almond extract
a pinch of salt

Mix the whole lot together.  Fill the tart cases and then arrange the sliced pears on the top.  Brush the sliced pears with lemon juice to prevent them browning.
Bake at 170C for about 25 minutes.

The tarts were actually very nice.  The crust was crumbly and biscuit and the filling was moist.  However, I personally felt that the coconut oil was too overwhelming a flavour.  I think making it again I would swap out half of the coconut oil for a vegetable oil.  I would also swap the agave syrup for honey, or at the least half the syrup as it was too sweet. 

For the filling, I think I would up the apple sauce content and reduce the oil content.

Which is handy, as I have some vegan friends coming to dinner next month, so I can fiddle with the recipe then.