Macadamia nuts are native to Australia, plus they’re super delicious and nutritious! Given that our country is blessed with something so fabulous I feel we should embrace our natural nut and cook the most decadent of desserts in its honour. So, I give you the Caramel Macadamia Tart.
This elegant dessert would be perfect served with just a quenelle of ice-cream or cream. The base is an incredibly short, buttery pastry and the filling a decadent, silky, soft caramel. The highlight of this tart is the crunchy, salted macadamia nuts which give a lovely sweet and salty appeal to the tart.
Caramel Macadamia Tart for Christmas or any occasion
I’m sharing this recipe because I feel the Caramel Macadamia Tart would make a fabulous Christmas desserts. While a hot Christmas pudding is delicious, it’s good to embrace our Aussie flavours, so this dessert is what I will be serving on Christmas day.
I like to serve dishes that are simple to prepare and don’t have a lot of ingredients. This recipe ticks all my boxes. Happily, I found most of the ingredients already in my pantry. With the supermarket being so busy at the moment I was very relieved that all I needed from the corner store to make this treat was some fresh cream.
It’s not only the supermarket that gets busy at this time of year. Christmas Day tends to get very busy which makes this recipe is ideal. The tart can be made ahead of time and serve it cold! No need to heat up the kitchen again when it’s time for dessert.
When I made this dessert, I found that I was able to make four individual mini tarts in addition to this big one. We have been eating the little ones in the lead up to Christmas.
Macadamia Tart Decadent Caramel
Ingredients
Pastry
- 500 g flour
- 250 g butter
- 130 g icing sugar
- iced water as required
Filling
- 200 g thickened cream
- 100 g butter room temp
- 2 cups salted macadamia nuts roughly chopped
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 3 Tbs water
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees.
- Grease a pastry tin with butter, for ease choose a tin with a removable base.
Pastry
- Use a food processor to pulse the flour, butter and icing sugar.
- Pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
- With the food processor running add the water slowly 10mls at a time until the mix just balls together. Stop immediately.
- Remove pastry and divide it in half.
- Wrap the pastry in glad wrap in two flat rectangular package.
- Refrigerate one pastry for 20mins and freeze the other for your next tart.
- Roll the pastry out between two pieces of plastic.
- Place pastry into the prepared tins being careful not to stretch the pastry or it may shrink.
- Prick the base of the pastry with a fork.
- Place baking paper over the pastry and add baking beans.
- Bake blind for 20 mins.
- Remove baking beans and bake for a further 5 minutes or until the base is fully cooked. If pastry is already golden prior to this step reduce the oven temp to 150 degrees to prevent further colouring of the shell.
Filling
- Place the sugar and water in a heavy based saucepan.
- Heat on low until the sugar has dissolved, stir gently.
- When the sugar has completely dissolved raise the heat and stop stirring.
- Watch the sugar carefully until it turns golden in colour.
- Add the cream and stir for 5 minutes.
- Add the butter and continue to cook and stir until the caramel mixture starts to thicken.
- Stir the macadamia nuts through the caramel.
- Fill the cooked pastry case with the mixture.
- Place the tart/s into the oven to cook for 8-10 minutes.
- The tarts will be bubbling and golden
- Remove the tart from the oven and allow it to cool before removing it from the tin.
- Refrigerate until required.
- Serve cold.
Notes
Nutrition
Have I sold you on the merits of my Macadamia Caramel Tart yet? I certainly hope so because it’s lush! I have to admit; I found the recipe on the Australian Macadamia website, so I can’t take the credit for it.
What other dishes with Aussie flavors do you think should make and appearance on the Christmas table alongside our Caramel and Macadamia Tart.