White Chocolate and Raspberry Tart with Sesame Nougatine

It is a long weekend Easter holiday in Australia. Planning to catch up with some sleep, but it looks like a busy weekend. I need some Energiser Bunny batteries to help me get through it! Let me see, we had friends over for dinner last night, having some cousins over for dinner tonight,  followed by lunch on Saturday with a girlfriend and a wedding in the evening. For Easter Sunday, we have been invited to our Greek (ex)neighbours place for lunch (yippie!), followed by a housewarming and then dinner with friends. This is insane, and putting it down in writing just makes it worse... AND it doesn't end there. We also have been invited out for dinner on Monday. Hopefully, I'll get some me-time when the boys play golf on Monday morning....

Anyway, it is nice to end the working week on a Thursday. I cooked up a storm for dinner last night, but I'm posting the dessert recipe first because the main and entree recipes are a little long and tedious, to make and to put in writing. I like this recipe very much, and I've adapted this recipe from Matt Moran self-titled cookbook. Goes well with a sticky dessert wine too.

White Chocolate and Raspberry Tart with Sesame Nougatine
(makes 6 small tarts)

Pastry
225 g plain flour
25 g caster sugar
125 g butter, chilled and cut into cubes
1 egg

Filling:
300ml thickened cream, whipped
100g white chocolate, melted gently on top of hot water

Nougatine:
25g toasted white sesame seeds
10g poppy seeds
25g butter
1 tsp glucose syrup
50g sugar

2 punnets raspberries

First make the pastry. Put all ingredients except the egg into a food processor. Blend until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg and blend until a dough forms. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 mins.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees.To make the nougatine, combine sugar, butter and glucose syrup in a bowl. Heat gently in microwave until sugar dissolves. Add both the seeds into this mixture and stir to combine.
Line a baking tray with baking paper. Pour th mixture on the tray and spread out as thinly as possible. Bake in ove for 10 mins or until golden. Leave aside to cool.

Roll dough into a 3 mm thickness and line 6 greased tart tins with removable bases (roughly 10cm in diameter). Blind bake in oven (preheated to 180 degrees) for 15 mins. Remove beads and bake further for 5 mins, or until lightly golden. Leave to cool.

After melting the white chocolate, add 1/3 of the whipped cream to the chocolate, fold to combine. Finally add the rest of the cream and mix well.

Fill the tart shells with white chocolate cream. Top the tart with raspberries. Chill the tarts.
When ready to serve, break the nougatine into pieces and sprinkle on top of the tarts.