passover week 2026 - torta di pere da pietro
Well I do like to test myself at Passover week and this year I chose to 'renovate' an old recipe for torta di pere da pietro. The original tart is a lovely thing - a custard filled pastry shell topped with pear slices and an almond filling - but could I make it passover friendly. I probably last made this tart 20 years ago and I was up for the challenge.
I used my regular passover shortcrust pastry and followed the original pastry cream and filling recipes but used potato and/or tapioca starch instead of the original plain flour/cornflour.
The tart is not exactly the same as the original. The pastry is a temperamental thing. It is crisp the day of baking but softens overnight, so ideally bake and serve the tart on the same day. If you must serve it the following day, keep it refrigerated so you can cut the tart without the pastry shattering into pieces. Look at that cross-section!
Here's the recipe for you which makes a 35 x 10 cm oblong tart. You will have some leftover pastry and almond filling but I think its better to have too much than too little. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.
Passover torta di pere da pietro
Pastry
125g superfine matzo meal
¼ cup (25g) almond meal
2 tbs (35g) tapioca or potato starch
3 tsp caster sugar
pinch sea salt
110g unsalted butter, cut into 1-cm pieces
1 egg yolk
2- 4 tbs iced water
Pastry Cream
110g caster sugar
3 egg yolks
pinch sea salt flakes
¼ cup potato or tapioca starch or superfine matzo meal
1 tsp Passover vanilla extract or the seeds of ½ vanilla pod, scraped
450mls full cream milk
Almond Filling
75g unsalted butter
55g (1/4 cup) caster sugar
85g almond meal
a pinch of salt
1 egg
½ cup reserved pastry cream
¼ cup potato or tapioca starch
To assemble
2 small ripe pears
To serve
icing sugar
Pastry
Combine the first 5 ingredients in the food processor and pulse to aerate. Add the diced butter and pulse ten times until butter is the size of peas. Whisk together the egg yolk and 2 tablespoons of ice water. Add it to the dough and pulse until it comes together. Add more ice water if needed. Knead the dough a couple of times and wrap it in plastic wrap forming a flat rectangle. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Pastry cream
In a medium size bowl, mix together the sugar, the egg yolks, vanilla and salt until well combined. Mix in the potato starch or tapioca starch to form a smooth paste. Stir the milk into the mixture then pour through a sieve into a saucepan. Cook over a low heat until the mixture boils and thickens. It will start to look lumpy during the cooking process but just keep stirring vigorously until the lumps disappear. Scrape into a container, cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap to prevent a skin forming on the pastry cream and set aside to cool.
Almond filling
Measure out ½ cup of the cooled pastry cream. In a small bowl, cream the butter with the sugar, the almond meal and the salt. Add the egg and beat until light. Fold in the pastry cream and the potato or tapioca starch. Taste for sweetness and adjust as needed. Set to one side.
Assembly
The pastry makes a generous amount, so you won’t need all of it. Roll out the pastry to about a 4-mm thickness between the two sheets of paper and line a lightly greased oblong tin with the pastry. The pastry is inclined to break apart so just gently press it together and patch any holes. Trim the edges then place the pastry shell in the freezer to rest for 30 minutes or until frozen.
While the tart shell is chilling, preheat the oven to 170°C, conventional and place a baking tray on the centre rack.
Remove the tart shell from the freezer. Spread the remaining pastry cream over the pastry base to a depth of approximately 1 cm. Peel, core and slice the pears and arrange the slices over the pastry cream. Gently spoon the almond filling over the pears and smooth the top.
Place the tart on the preheated tray and bake at 170°C, conventional for about 1 hour or until golden. Reduce temperature to 150°C and bake for another 20 minutes or until the tart is cooked through. Place on a cooling rack and let the tart cool completely in the pan before unmoulding.
Chill and dust with icing sugar before serving.
The tart was very well received. I did miss the crisp tart pastry shell but the superfine matzo meal added an earthiness to the pastry that was not unpleasnat at all. It was still a lovely tart.
See you again tomorrow with my last bake for Passover Week 2026.
Bye for now,
Jillian
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