September: Noga – Two Layer Vegan Strawberry Tart

Surprise!

We’re back!

This is so exciting!

I can’t believe Rony had saved the envelopes, and even took them with her when she moved to a different country. I have no idea where my envelopes are. But even if I had them, I would have needed a new set of recipes because…. I need them to be vegan.

I know, I’m shocked too.

Things have changed since we started the bake-off. One of them is that I got me a live-in boyfriend who’s vegan. Again, I’m shocked too. Side-note, I really love the term “live-in boyfriend”. It sounds like somebody I hired, like a maid. Anyway, out of solidarity, I now try to bake vegan only. Solidarity, and not feeling the shame of baking whole desserts just for myself.

This is all a disclaimer to say that vegan baking is sometimes surprising, and sometimes just a complete fail, as is the case today. But I told Rony that our readers (?) should also be exposed to the flops, to show that we, too, are human.

OK I will stall no longer. Let’s get to it. The theme this month is Layers and the recipe is this strawberry tart. It’s a pretty simple recipe, but it was my first time using agar agar. I also really liked the decoration and actually bought edible flowers for this, which I didn’t end up using, but we’ll get to that.

Crust ingredients. Yes, we buy big jugs of maple syrup. And we finish them very quickly

First step is the crust, which is very simple. You blend almonds and pistachios in a food processor, add maple syrup, coconut oil, some cardamom and salt, mix, and press into a tin. Easy-peasy and you think, what can go wrong there? the actual result was a very crumbly base that didn’t hold. *shrugs*

The filling is where things started to really fall apart faster than the crumbly base. I heated up the coconut cream, added cornstarch and agar-agar, and.. I had major lumps. That wouldn’t go away as much as I tried to smoosh them.

I have nothing good to say about this

I didn’t know what to do about the lumps and I hoped they would melt, but they didn’t. I decided to ignore them completely. Then you’re supposed to keep it boiling until it thickens, which was kind of hard to decide how thick is thick enough, and then you leave it to cool. I poured it into another bowl so it cools faster, and I waited the stated 15 minutes, only to come back and find that it cooled so much it actually already solidified in the bowl instead of in the tin, and also had a skin forming. All of this was pretty gross, would not change as much as I tried to mix it, and (feeling where this is going) I just poured it over the base as-is and got a lumpy yucky first layer.

Nothing about this one neither

But I’m a brave soldier so I soldiered on to the next layer, after placing some strawberries on top of the first. I thought – ok, I learned some lessons, this one is going to be better. First thing I did: sifted the agar and the cornflour in a sieve before dumping them in the coconut cream, hoping it would help with the lumps. It didn’t.

Yep.

Again with the question of the thickening, this time I opted for shorter time, hoping it wouldn’t solidify so fast as it cools. Finally, I also sifted the whole mixture so at least I can leave the lumps out of the actual tart. This was perhaps smart in some way, but it meant leaving out a meaningful amount out, and when I poured the mixture over the strawberries, it turned out I didn’t even have enough to cover the completely.

I mean… ew

No matter, I thought, I will decorate the crap out of this and completely cover this abomination!

But the simple and sad truth was, as it cooled in the fridge, I just knew it’s just not worth it and no one’s going to want to eat it – I had actually planned to take it to a dinner with family which was so naive in hindsight.

See above re:crumbling base

We tried a piece. It was.. not good. It tasted like rubber. I ended up nixing the decoration plans, and throwing the whole thing in the garbage. I’m half taking the blame, maybe I don’t know how to work with agar. But maybe it’s just the recipe. Or maybe some things just don’t work in vegan versions. Or maybe it’s just that in general I hate jell-o textures and this was just not meant to be.

Not to leave with a bad taste (very literally), I will say that I’ve made some *phenomenal* vegan desserts. Even tarts. Please see Exhibits A and B:

 

yum

 

AH-MAZING bakewell tart

A: https://leelalicious.com/no-bake-chocolate-tart-vegan-gluten-free-paleo/

B: https://www.lazycatkitchen.com/vegan-raspberry-bakewell-tart/

~Honor restored~

I’m sure the next ones will be better. Hopefully, this one has been a lesson to all of us.