How to Make Non-Dairy Tarts
To make a non-dairy tart all you need to do is to replace regular butter with any type of nut or seed butter. Use a bit of vinegar and water to make it creamy and you will have a very stable and easy to work with dough.
You can use any type of vinegar (apple cider, rice or white wine vinegar). You need it to break down the fat content of the butter and make it creamy. It’ll be much easier to blend it with water and mix with flour.
Depending on the type of nut or seed butter you use, you will also get additional vitamins and nutrients. For example:
Almond butter: Vitamin E, calcium, copper, magnesium;
Cashew butter: Vitamins B6, K, Phosphorus, Manganese, Magnesium, Zinc;
Peanut butter: protein, Vitamin E, copper, magnesium;
Tahini (sesame seed butter): Copper, Selenium, Phosphorus, Iron, Zinc, Calcium;
Sunflower seed butter: Vitamins E, B1, B6, Iron, Copper, Selenium, Manganese, Zinc.
What type of nut or seed butter you use will affect the taste. If you are making savory tarts or quiches, it’s best to use nut butters with neutral tastes: cashew or almond butter (preferably white, made from blanched almonds) or sunflower seed butter. Other butters will have a noticeable taste - peanut, tahini, hazelnut etc. If you are making a sweet tart, it doesn’t matter which one you use.
You can pre-bake the tarts before loading them with the filling or you can load them with the filling and then bake them, depending on what the recipe calls for. If you pre-bake the tarts they will shrink by ~ 10%. Pre-baked tarts can be easily lifted out of the mold. We do recommend that you use molds with removable bottoms. It’ll be much easier to lift the tart out of the mold regardless of the cooking method.
We have a universal recipe for all our tarts you can easily scale to fit your needs - make half or double, for example. The standard recipe will yield ~ 250 g (8 oz) of dough.
The amount of dough for the base recipe will line one standard tart mold ~ 20 cm (8 inch) or 4 mini-tart molds 12 cm (5 inch).
You can roll it out, shape and bake it right away or you can cling film it and store in the fridge or freezer for later. If you want to freeze it, we recommend lining the tart molds first, then cling-filming them or placing them into a plastic bag and then freezing them.
Ingredients
120 g ~ 1 cup all-purpose wheat flour
60 g ~ ¼ cup nut or seed butter
60 ml ~ ¼ cup water
5 ml ~ 1 tsp vinegar, any type
5 g ~ 1 tsp baking powder
