Fold-Over Pear Torte

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Cakelaw of Laws of the Kitchen. She selected Fold-Over Pear Torte. You can get the complete recipe on Laws of the Kitchen. This was quite an interesting recipe. I didn’t really know if this was cake-like, tart-like or what. At first I thought that it would be something like a rustic tart, but it was very different!

So to make this, you line a springform pan with pastry; fill with chopped pears, dried apricots, and nuts and then top with a custard filling. There are a lot of ingredients and flavors in this, and I wasn’t sure at all what to expect. Making this was a bit challenging. I guess I should have known that this might be troublesome since Dorie says that it “might be tricky” to line the springform pan with pastry! That was pretty hard, but luckily I had enough excess pastry to patch the many holes I made when I put the pastry in the pan. You put in the filling and then you fold the pastry towards the filling; not all the way over, since the filling rises while baking. Yep, I was confused too! I just edged the pastry towards the filling, stuck it in the oven and hoped for the best.

I think it baked up fairly well; the filling had risen and met with the crust. Mine didn’t brown all that much, but I was afraid to overbake it. Although the recipe suggests eating it the same day it was baked, I put mine in the refrigerator and ate it the next day. I don’t often bake with pears, so when I tried this I kept thinking that it should taste like apples, which of course it doesn’t. I think that there are too many flavors in this. Maybe if you left out the apricots it would be better. Maybe I needed to bake the pastry a little more so that it was more browned. Overall, I didn’t like this all that much, but it was an interesting recipe to try.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 348 and 349