I got the flour, salt, sugar, and toasted/ground pecans (I didn't have hazelnuts) all mixed up in a bowl and added the room temperature butter. I used exactly the amount of butter the recipe called for but it was WAY too much. According to the recipe, after mixing in the butter the dough should "resemble wet sand and clump together", and THEN you should add a tablespoon of water and form it into a ball. Well my mixture was so soupy just with the soft butter that I never even got around to adding any water! In fact I had to add almost an additional 1/4 c. flour just to get the dough to hold together at all! But I didn't want to go overboard with the flour so I wrapped up the goop and chilled it per the instructions.
At this point I still thought it might come out alright, or at least I was hoping it would, because I tasted some of the dough while I was making it and it was by far the best tasting raw dough I have ever had (probably all the extra butter)! Once it came out of freezer, I rolled it out and got it in the pie pan. It wasn't the easiest dough to work with but it was holding together just fine. I added the parchment paper and weights and stuck it in the oven. However, 20 minutes later I opened up the oven to disaster. The dough was so soft and gooey it attached to the parchment paper while baking, and when I lifted the paper out of the tin, half the tart came with it. I really should have tossed it at this point, but alas this dough tasted too good to be wasted. So I used a wooden spoon to push the dough off the paper and back into the pan and squashed it down into an even layer and baked it sans paper for a few more minutes.
The pear mixture came out just fine except for one thing: my lack of pear cutting finesse. My first two pears looked pretty awful as I tried to figure out the best way to slice them into perfectly even and identical pieces. I kinda got the hang of it on the last pear so hopefully my next tart will turn out prettier.
The one good thing I can honestly say about this recipe is that the spice combination with the pears is inspired. Until this recipe I had never used ground ginger while baking. It adds a wonderful "kick" and sharpness to the sweetness of the pears and brown sugar! I'm on the lookout for more recipes using ground ginger, so if you happen to know of any please send them my way!
Despite all the drama it actually came out ok in the end. Not very pretty but quite tasty!
I'm trying to find a different pecan tart dough recipe so I can try this again. The pears are perfection, but the dough certainly needs some help.
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