Mixed Up Tart

A while back The Daring Bakers challenge was to bake a crostata. At the time I made two with different fillings but only posted one with an apple filling on my blog.

I also made a crostata with couscous cream, bananas and chocolate, this is it's story…

The pastafrolla recipe and directions are exactly the same as those for the apple crostata, but the fillings were an experiment.

I had read somewhere that if you cook couscous and make it into a creamy custard paste then the texture is very similar to the set custard that you would find in a sweet tart. And with couscous being one of my favourite foods I thought I'd give it a go.

So I set my couscous to boil. I sweetened the water slightly and dropped in some lemon rind in the hope of infusing the couscous with a sweeter, dessert appropriate taste.

The best way to get a sticky soft couscous is simply to overcook it, this will

help to make a smooth and silky 'custard'.

Next I pushed and poked and pressed the cooked couscous through a fine sieve. I did

this a couple of times to make sure that the mixture was smooth and lump free.

This sticky mess then went into a saucepan with half a carton of Oatly cream, vanilla seeds and sugar

and then slowly heated until the 'custard' reduced down and became a nice thick creamy texture.

And then into the pastfrolla cases…

Slices of fresh banana on top…

Then lots of melted chocolate and a pecan, just for the look of it!

Conclusion:

A rather strange mix of flavours since I didn't think it through and just made it up as I went along, a dangerous past time. The dark chocolate and lemon flavour in the pastafrolla and couscous didn't really blend together very well, I had hoped that the freshness of the lemon would nicely cut through the rich chocolate. This was not so, it resulted in a strange strange taste.

The couscous cream had a very good set custard texture, squishy and thick. I think that coconut cream would probably be a better substitute for the Oatly, it has a richer and fattier texture, and next time I'll leave out the lemon!

I wouldn't make a tart with the same flavour combinations again (who would?!), but I will definitely take the couscous cream idea and run with it, I think it would probably work well sandwiched between two perfect macaron shells, *sigh*.

Something I just found out, dolphins sleep by resting half of their brain at a time. This allows them to keep one eye open and surface for air! Well I never!

Bisous bisous xxx