Pistachio Cream Tartlets with Rose Petals, Three Ingredients

Method

1. Stand the jar somewhere warm for 20 minutes if it has come out of a cold cupboard. Pistachio cream stiffens as it cools and pipes cleanly at room temperature, and warming it is the only preparation in this recipe.
2. Stir the jar thoroughly, right down to the bottom. Nut spreads separate in storage, and an unstirred jar gives you oily first tartlets and dry last ones.
3. Open the pack and check the cases. Out of a sealed pack they snap when pressed; if the pack has been open in a humid kitchen they are already soft, and no filling fixes that.
4. Set the twelve cases out on the plate you plan to serve from. Filled cases travel badly, so move them once rather than twice.
5. Spoon the pistachio cream into a piping bag fitted with a 10mm plain nozzle. A zip-lock bag with 10mm cut off one corner does the same job.
6. Pipe about 15g into each case, starting at the outside edge and coiling inwards, finishing 5mm above the rim. The jar fills all twelve with a scrape left in the bottom.
7. Crumble the rose petals between your fingers and let them fall over the tray. Whole petals sit on top and slide off; broken ones catch in the swirl and stay where you put them.
8. Scatter the chopped pistachios and the salt, if you are using them, and serve.

Why this one does not go soggy

Every rule about filled pastry cases is really a rule about water. Curd, fruit and loose cream are mostly water, and water moves out of the filling and into the base within the hour. Pistachio cream is nuts, sugar and oil, so there is very little water in the jar to move anywhere. Fill these in the morning and the bases are still crisp at dinner, which is the opposite of how the same shell behaves under lemon curd.

Two things still argue for filling close to the table. The piped surface is glossiest in the first hour and dulls a little as it dries, and the rose petals soften and lose their colour once they have been sitting on a moist filling. Pipe early if the day demands it, then crumble the petals over in the last hour. The guide to the Confiletas cases sets out the fat-layer trick for the fillings that do carry water.

Follow the label once the jar is open, and let the cream come back to room temperature before you pipe it again. It sits with the rest of the Borgo de Medici range, alongside the caramel sauce and the truffle jars.

Questions we get asked

How do you fill pastry cases without them going soggy?

Pick a filling with fat in it rather than water, or put a fatty layer between the two. Curd, chopped fruit and unwhipped cream are mostly water and will soften a base inside an hour. Pistachio cream, ganache and thick cream cheese are mostly fat, so they sit in the shell without moving into it. When the filling has to be a wet one, brush the case with melted chocolate and let it set for ten minutes first.

How far ahead can you fill tart cases?

It depends on the filling, which is why the usual answer of one hour is only half true. With pistachio cream you have most of a day. With lemon curd or fresh fruit you have about an hour before the base starts to give. Either way, keep spare packs sealed until the day: a case left out in a humid kitchen is soft before anything is piped into it.

What can you make with pistachio cream?

Treat it as a filling and a sauce in the same jar. It pipes into pastry cases, spreads on toast or brioche, sandwiches two plain biscuits together, folds through mascarpone for a quick cream, warms into a sauce for ice cream, and goes between the layers of a sponge with nothing done to it first. Thick enough to hold a shape, sweet enough to need no sugar added.

Nothing here needs the oven, which is the point of it on a December afternoon when the oven is already full. The 40mm cases and the other four Confiletas shapes sit together in our tarts and pastry shells, all at the one price, and if you would rather send dessert than make it, the Christmas hampers are packed by hand. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.