Peanut Butter "Shaken Espresso" Tart
Settling into my kitchen over the past few weeks has been, dare I say, fun. I want to make it a lean, mean machine that functions as a studio just as well as it does the place where I air-fry Trader Joe’s spicy chicken nuggets. I’m all about highs and lows, baby. I’m thinking about how I want to show it to you all, and I’m also working on ways to show you how I’m organizing it (and all my baking stuff) as well as how I’m stocking my pantry and refrigerator. Until then, read on…
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This recipe is inspired by creations of two other great food creators. First, the peanut butter shaken espressos made internet-famous by Reilly Meehan. Second, the Maple Sea Salt Latte Tart from Audrey Leonard (@redcurrantbakery) that I couldn’t get out of my head for months!
Peanut butter is a powerful flavor. It’s great at playing off of fruity and acidic ingredients like chocolate or jams, but it can tend to overwhelm whatever it’s paired with. That’s why there’s less PB in this filling than you might think, but the flavor is still undeniable.
Getting the coffee flavor to come through was another story. I tried to just use instant coffee, which is great because it’s super strong and dissolved quickly without adding more water to the custard. However, the flavor can be pretty one note. Then I tried mixing actual brewed espresso into the custard. This was a non-starter because, next to the peanut butter, I couldn’t taste the coffee flavor at all. Doing what I’ve done in other coffee recipes, I decided to coarsely crush some dark roast coffee beans and steep them in the cream. That did the trick. We got all the freshly brewed coffee taste and you could still detect it despite the overpowering peanut butter. I’m also giving you the option to add even more coffee flavor by adding a bit of instant coffee to the custard.
Okay, let me quickly explain something I learned during this recipe R&D. Espresso powder, ground espresso, and instant coffee/espresso are not the same thing. And many people online are confused by this. Here are the differences as best I can tell from my research. Ground espresso is just ground coffee beans, which has a very fine texture as required by the espresso method of making coffee. Espresso powder is a specialty food/baking ingredient that is used in baked goods like brownies or cakes, or even sometimes in meat rubs, that is made from espresso grounds that have already been brewed, dried and then pulverized. Instant coffee/espresso is made from a special liquid coffee extract that is either spray or freeze-dried to create tiny granules. These granules are no longer coffee bean grounds and completely dissolve in water. Now you know!
I was trying to be cute here and do a little stripe design with some finely ground coffee and two things went wrong: 1) the parchment strips stuck (???) to the filling and peeled off the top when I took them off. 2) The coffee beans were gritty (I should have known, dumb mistake.) Next time I would use stiffer straight edges to make the stripes so the tart’s surface wasn’t disturbed — and I’d just sift instant espresso/coffee powder, which has a better flavor and no gritty texture.
A note on pan sizes:
I made this in a 10-inch tart/quiche tin, 2 inches deep, with a 7.5-cup capacity. If you don’t have one of those, you have some options. Using a smaller or shallower tart pan will still work, you’ll just have extra crust/filling and you’ll need to bake the filling for less time — more like 25 to 30 minutes, but use the visual cues I give over that time range. Alternately, a 9 or 10-inch springform pan would work in a pinch, or even a pie dish — which just wouldn’t produce as neat slices.
Makes one 10-inch, 2-inch deep tart
Ingredients
