Lebanese Vegan Date tart

A combination of delicious Arabic Lebanese ingredients that will take your tart baking recipes to the next level. This recipe is healthy yet full of flavors and texture and very easy to do with easy ingredients. 

This recipe is very influenced with Lebanese/Arabic cuisine for many reasons. 

The crust: my crust recipe for this recipe is inspired by the famous “ghraybeh” Lebanese short bread cookies that is made of a mixture of almond and pistachio with butter and sugar. I evolved my crust from the same concept of the almond and pistachio that give it this buttery nutty flavor of a crust with a zesty fresh taste of orange blossom water and zest. Plus, to make it more Lebanese with a much deeper sweet taste I added my favorite traditional natural sweetener” carob molasses”.

Carob molasses:  is a very Lebanese traditional molasses that you can barely find any place else. It have very sweet fruity, chocolate-like flavor that will make any recipe stand out !

I personally love this ingredient so much because of its original taste. I use it in sweets such as gingerbread carob cookies, gingerbread carob pancakes or my baked apple and carob oatmeal breakfast. I even use it to boost some savory dishes flavors like in my beef brisket burger recipe . 

So you got what I mean, I simply love it! 

The filling: well! beside the carob, it is after all a date tart, so the dates are a must! 😛 

The filling in this recipe is naturally sweetened by the dates and so creamy BUT yet it is very clean and healthy and easy to do. 

Nothing complicated about this recipe. it is even easier than the normal tarts recipes. It is a vegan, gluten-free, grain-free and very healthy dessert to impress your guest with in a very Lebanese way! 😛 

REMINDER!!! I will be uploading an Arabic version of each recipe as a picture (check it out below) so you can save it so don’t forget to pin it to make it later. You can Also save it from my Instagram account and tag me #annacookingconcept when you try it out !

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Lebanese Vegan Date tart

“A healthier version of the date tart with a Lebanese twist. A buttery rich but oil-free crust with a creamy refined sugar-free filling. Impress your guests on your next occasion with this marvelous date tart. That it’s sure to go down a treat with everyone because it is vegan, gluten-free, grain-free, refined sugar-free and full of natural wholesome ingredients”.

Servings 4 tarts

Ingredients

FOR THE CRUST:

• 2 cups almond flour ^{see notes}
• 1 cup pistachio, finely grounded ^{see notes}
• 1 tsp cardamom
• ½ tsp orange zest
• Pinch of salt
• 3 tbsp. carob molasses ^{see notes}
• ½ tsp orange blossom water
• 3 to 4 tbsp water

FOR THE FILLING:

• 4 pitted dates
• 1 cup pitted dates to make paste
• 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
• ½ tsp orange blossom water
• 1 ½ tbsp cornstarch
• Pinch of salt

FOR THE GARNISH:

• Some grounded pistachio
• Whole pistachio
• Almond flakes
• Dates

Instructions

• STEP 01: warm-up your almond milk till steaming and soak the 1 cup of dates in it. Set aside.
• STEP 02: In a deep bowl mix almond flour with grounded pistachio, salt, orange zest and cardamom powder.
• Add the molasses and orange blossom water and mix it all together till you have some sort of crumble.
• STEP 03: Start adding the water 1 tbsp at the time until the texture is clumpy and hold together when you squeeze it in your hands, and you can form a sort of a sticky dough.
• STEP 04: divide your dough into 4 equals pieces if you are using the small tart tray (see notes). And start by pressing the dough inside each mold in the bottom and the edges to make the base of your tart. Cut the 4 pitted dates into cubes and spread into each mold 1 cubed date. Set the base aside.
• STEP 05: preheat your oven on 180 C◦
• STEP 06: pour in your blender or food processor, the soaked dates with the almond milk add all the remaining filling ingredients and blend until you have a smooth thick mixture.
• STEP 07: poor the filling equally into the 4 tarts base. And bake for 45 minutes in the preheated oven. remove from oven and let it cool down completely on your kitchen counter top before storing overnight in the fridge to firm up.
• STEP 08: Garnish to your liking fresh before serving. You can store these small tarts up to 5 days in the fridge. enjoy!

Notes

Almond flour: is basically almond grounded into a very thin flour-like mixture. You can find it in all the grocery stores and you can make it at home by grinding blanched or silvered almonds or even almond flakes. just add the almonds to the food processor/blender and pulse for 10 sec than scrape the edges, keep doing that until you have a fine almond flour. The important thing is not to over blend so you don’t end up with almond butter, pulse 10 sec and scrape is the key!
Pistachio flour or grounded pistachio: pistachio flour is harder to find in grocery store but still you may find it in some. But in case you don’t just use the same concept of the almond flour above with whole pistachio nuts without the hard shell of course!
Carob molasses: (دبس الخروب) is my must favorite natural sweetener of all time it like any other molasses but with a much deeper fruity chocolate-like taste coming from the carob. It is made by soaking milled carob pods in water and reducing the extracted liquid till you have a thick syrup. I highly recommend using it in this recipe to maintain its deep authentic taste, but if you can get your hand on some carob molasses you can easily replace it with the same amount of normal molasses that you have in hand.
Tart tray: in this recipe I used small (⌀=12 cm) tart tray but you can totally use any size of tart tray you like. With the same amount of ingredients, you use a big tart tray of (⌀=20cm) or 6 of the smaller tart trays

Author: annacookingconcept

Course: Appetizer, brunch, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: arabic, authentic, lebanese, Mediterranean, middle eastern

Keyword: dates, lebanese food, sweets, tart, vegan