Almond meal tart dough: sweet super food
Gluten free doughs have more to themselves than avoiding a dietary condition. An alternative approach is to think of using gluten free grains and nuts as bringing back nutritious and perhaps forgotten flours into our diet. Flours rich in iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, fiber, vitamins A and E, for instance. I sense that knowing how this goes can still a bit of blur for some, but down to business it is, for whatever reason, an honest alternative.
I have been experimenting with nut based flours: Almond meal, walnut meal and hazelnut meal, and find it quite tempting to think that whilst eating dessert, which has from certain points of view -a bad rap-, I am actually reducing LDL cholesterol (the bad one) by eating a hefty source of monounsaturated fats, protein and getting a sustainable dose of energy. It is a win win situation.
Almond flour dough
Ingredients
200 gm almond meal
150 gm rice flour
½ Tbsp cinnamon
5 Tbsp diced cold butter
1 egg
Method
Preheat the oven to 150° C
Mix together all the dry ingredients. Using only your fingertips mix in the diced cold butter with the dry ingredients, until the mixture looks like oats. Add the egg and knead. Divide the dough into six parts if making tartelettes. Fill tartelette molds or single tart mold by pressing, spreading and thinning out the dough evenly. Pop in the oven for 20 minutes until lightly golden. After the 20 minutes have passed check the dough and leave it in the oven longer if necessary, but do keep an eye on it from this point on. This dough will get harder once it cools down, so it should not be left in the oven to brown. When done remove from the oven and let cool before filling.
Herd & Ofen 