I really, really, really love nuts. Especially walnuts and pecans, as you will come to notice, if you haven't already. The pecan pie is a lovely thing to make, but this is a more everyday sort of recipe - easier to serve in little morsels. It's based on a lovely recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery in Kensington, London. They use all sorts of nuts for theirs, but I think this combination is KING. I also want to try adding ginger - so I'll keep you posted on that front.
Makes about 16 small slices - I used a 23cm square cake tin
Base:
150g plain flour
40g icing sugar
120g soft butter
Topping:
100g pecan halves
100g walnut halves
50g butter
50g golden syrup
110g light muscovado or brown sugar
2 large eggs
Preheat the oven to 170°C and line a baking tin with baking parchment.
In a food processor or mixer, whizz all the base ingredients to form a dough. Press this in to the prepared tin. Using another square of baking paper, use your hands to smooth the dough to the edges, making sure there's a little going up the sides.
Place in the oven and bake for 20 mins until pale golden.
While the base is baking, prepare the topping. Melt together the butter, sugar and golden syrup over a low heat, remove from the heat and cool slightly. In a small bowl, lightly whisk the eggs. Pour the butter/sugar/syrup mixture in to the egg mixture and stir to incorporate.
Scatter the nuts evenly over the pastry base, then carefully pour the topping mixture evenly over the nuts.
Bake in the oven for another 20 minutes until the topping is a dark golden brown.
Allow to cool before cutting.
ENJOY!
Print Version:
You can use any nuts for this of course - just make sure it all adds up to 200g! I'm going to try 2 tsp of ground ginger in the base and chopped glacé ginger in the topping next time... with just walnuts I think. I'll post the results here....