tricker treat

Pumpkin tart(elette) with a little bit of tricks. Tricks will be revealed in an update to follow sometime soon. Although I can't be on your doorstep to do trick-or-treats, and I might be a bit too old for that anyways, I wish everyone a happy Halloween. To those of you that, like myself, don't really do all that Halloween stuff, well, have a wonderful week.

***Updated Nov 12*** Ahem, it's not that the "tricks" were so special I had to keep them unknown forever. It's just my typical sporadic blogging habits. Thanks anyone who still remember this blog.

Okay, pumpkin tarts. It involved slighlty more complicated procedures than needed for what I'd normally make, but it was merely a matter of making tart shells.

I prepared a tart dough a night before I planned to make the tarts, and on the day I baked the shells, whipped up the filling, filled the tart shells, and re-baked the whole thing, which then went into the fridge to cool.

I used Japanese kabocha pumpkins, which I think are the best of the kind. I love them in both cooking and baking, but when it's used for sweet stuff like pudding or cheesecake, recipes tend to tell you to use the flesh only, which leaves you with the bright green skin unused. But with this recipe, once you've cooked the kabocha, remove skin from the flesh, and chop it up to combine with nuts to fill the bottom of the tart shells. This not only allows to use up the kabocha skin (which I love) but adds a nice crunchy texture to the tarts with creamy and smooth filling. I combined the skin chunks with toasted walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and a bit of spices.


And the little "trick" part; these tartelettes were dairy- and sugar-free. Tart shells and filling, everything. Well, I have to say it was ALMOST sugar-free, as the home-made apricot jam I used to graze the bottom of the shell and the top of the filling did have a bit of white sugar. Otherwise, the tarts were sweetened with maple syrup and honey, and a bit of maple sugar, which is basically the same as maple syrup. The filling gained the cheesecake-like consistency from tofu along with ground almonds, soy milk, corn starch, and - believe ir or not - a tiny spoonful of miso.

Doesn't sound too appetizing, you might wonder, but the tarts tasted fine - I'd even say they were yummy. They had some aftertaste of tofu at room temperature, but after sitting in the fridge for hours or overnights and completely chilled, there was no trace of tofu or any of soy taste, and the filling tasted really like cheesecake, true to its namesake, as the recipe (in Japanese) calls it Pumpkin Tofu-Cheese Tart. With the tart shells light and crumbly and the filling rich and sweet, the tartelettes were just as good as any pumpkin tarts that I have ever had.