Guava Tart with Almond Cream
I'm not a big dessert eater, so preparing a dessert that is 75% butter is not exactly part of my regular repertoire. But when I stumbled across a receipe for "peach tart with almond cream" I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it: tropicalize it into a Pacific Rim dish using guavas.
This was more a fun experiment than anything, but I thought I'd go ahead and post my experiences as I can't be the only guava-lover out there looking for new ways to make use of this wacky tropical fruit.
I love the taste and smell of guavas. Though I have a guava tree in my backyard -- a rather unusual tree for California but thriving nonetheless -- it is still only a few years old and hasn't begun producing more than a couple guavas a year. So for this recipe I've used canned guavas which I purchased at the Mexican grocery store.
1. I started out by making the crust. First I placed 1 1/4 cups sifted flour, 3/4 tsp salt, 7 tsp cold butter cut into pieces, and 1 egg yolk into a mixer and mixed. Once mixed, I dropped 2-3 cold spoonfuls of water into the mixture (while mixing) and watched the mixture magically coalesce. This was formed into a ball with my hands and placed into the refrigerator (in a plastic bag) to cool.
2. While the crust dough cooled, I placed 2/3 cup blanched almonds and 2 tsp flour into a food processor and created an almond flour. I then placed this mixture into a mixer and combined it with the following: 7 tsp room temperature butter, 1 egg, 1/2 cup sugar, and 2 tsp vanilla extract. This was beat until light and fluffy.
3. I then took the dough out, rolled out the dough on a flour surface, and transferred it to a tart pan. Once the dough was molded to the shape of the tart pan, I pricked the bottom with a fork and placed the pan into the refrigerator to cool.
4. While the dough was cooling again, I cut approx. 8 guavas into slices. I then (after about 10 mins or so) took the tart pan out and filled it with the almond cream, topping this with the guava slices.
5. The tart then went into an oven preheated to 400F, baked for 15 mins. The temp was then turned down to 350F for another 15 mins. During the last 10 mins, I placed two spoonfuls of sugar over the top to caramelize.
Lessons learned: leaving the guava seeds in doesn't work! They are too hard, so remove the guava seeds before arranging them on the tart. Also, do not pile the guava pieces to compactly in the center of the tart because they will release too much water. Other than this, this recipe worked for me and tasted yummy. But one piece was enough... this is sweet, fatty, and decadent!