Macaroon Tart

This is my new favourite non-chocolate dessert recipe. It comes from Super Natural Everyday and you should make it. Really, you should. I used slightly less sugar than the recipe called for and it was still quite yummy and sweet. These bars have become quite popular to my family and friends!

Super Natural Everyday is a fantastic cookbook and always calls for using the best quality ingredients. I don’t always relay  that a recipe calls specifically for sea salt, as opposed to the common table salt or natural cane sugar, as opposed to the usual processed white sugar because it makes the recipes a bit wordy and complicated. However, I think it’s worth urging you to buy the better quality ingredients for your every day use.

We have been on a debt free diet for a number of years now (almost done!), making money very tight and yet when it comes to the quality of our food, I don’t skimp. In order to afford this better quality, we go without a lot of extras and make most of our food from scratch. This is worth it to me for for our health as well as our appreciation for the food we eat. I’m much more careful about how I use those quality ingredients.

In this particular recipe, I use organic unsulphured and unsweetened shredded coconut (I buy in bulk), raw demerara sugar (brown) and organic cane juice sugar (white). At the moment, the flour and butter I buy are the common ones available at the grocery store but I’m hoping to move in a better quality direction in the near future. If I had a mill I could order fresh wheat at a fairly affordable price to mill my own flour. Butter in particular is a difficult one for me to constantly buy organic because it’s double the price and we use so much of it and yet it’s probably an important switch to make. I’ll get there.

Here’s what I did:

Macaroon Tart

• 1 1/2 cups White Whole Wheat Flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened finely shredded Coconut
• 3/4 cup lightly packed Demerara Sugar
• scant 1/2 tsp Salt
• 10 tbsp Unsalted Butter, melted
• 2 cups unsweetened finely shredded Coconut
• 1/2 cup Sugar
• 4 large Egg Whites
• 1 1/2- 2 cups Berries (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, cherries)
• 1/3 cup Pistachios, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350’F. Butter an 8 x 11 baking dish and line with parchment.
2. To make the crust, in a large bowl, combine the flour, coconut, sugar and salt. Stir in the melted butter and mix until dough is crumbly but no longer dusty looking. Firmly press the mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes, or until barely golden. Remove and cool for a few moments.
3. In the meantime, prepare the coconut macaroon filling by combining the coconut, sugar and egg whites. Mix until well combined.
4. Evenly distribute most of the berries on the crust and drop large spoonfuls of the macaroon filling over the tops of them. Mush and press the topping around the spaces behind the berries. Add the last few berries to the top.
5. Bake for 20- 25 minutes, until the peaks of the macaroon filling are deeply golden. Let the tart cool, then garnish with the crushed pistachios before slicing into small squares.