I’m not much of a sports fan with the exception of enjoying a good hockey game. I prefer spending my time baking and eating delicious things like this pear feta tart.
Pear Feta Tart
If you asked me when the Super Bowl is, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’d just know it’s sometime in February.
The date that I am aware of is the date of the Oscars (which is February 28th this year). Watching the Oscars has always been me and my mom’s thing.
We usually make a few different finger foods or snacks, pour ourselves a glass of wine, and comment on red carpet attire. Sometimes we cheer on movies we haven’t even seen just because our favorite actors or actresses are in them (I mean, anything with Leo deserves an Oscar, right?).
So you can understand that my idea of “game day” food is really just “girls’ night excuse to eat and drink” food, because that’s all I’ve ever known. While other people are making hot wings or blending their own salsa, I’m here creating this pear feta tart for my glass of cabernet.
Fancy? Not really, because you’ll see just how easy it is to whip up this tart in the video below.
I love tarts like these because they’re just such an easy way to play around with your favorite ingredients or seasonal fruits and veggies that you’ve picked up at the market. You can really customize this pear feta tart to your own taste, be it the fruit you use or the cheese you crumble on.
This particular pear feta variation is a wonderful play on sweet and salty. Pears are naturally sweet this time of year, but when they’re baked, they become even sweeter. Combine that with salty feta cheese, and it’s lovely example of that classic sweet and salty mix so many of us love.
You could add any number of herbs to this pear feta tart, but fresh thyme adds a wonderful earthy taste that not only compliments the pear and feta flavors, but it adds more depth of flavor to the tart.
I also sprinkle sliced almonds to add a little crunch and nuttiness, along with a drizzle of honey, which really highlights the sweet pears.
Feel free to use store-bought puff pastry, like I’ve done here, or make your own. Either way, you will enjoy the tantalizing taste of creamy feta and baked pears on a bed of golden, buttery puff pastry.
This pear feta tart is just pure heaven!
Pear Feta Tart
Sweet and salty individual tarts made with pears, feta cheese, and a drizzle of honey.
Ingredients
- 1 sheet of puff pastry
- 1 large bosc pear
- 3 - 4 sprigs of thyme, stems removed
- 4 oz . feta cheese
- 2 tbsp sliced almonds
- 1 egg, beaten
- honey, to drizzle on top
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
- Cut your sheet of puff pastry into 3 rectangles, then cut each rectangle in half. You should end up with 6 puff pastry squares. Prick the puff pastry squares with a fork, taking care not to prick the edges (you want the borders of the squares to be bare).
- Peel and core your pear, then cut into thin slices. Proceed by cutting these slices in half, horizontally.
- Crumble half of the feta cheese over the puff pastry squares. Top with 4-5 pear slices, and then the remaining feta cheese. Sprinkle some thyme leaves and sliced almonds over all the tarts.
- Brush the edges of the squares with the beaten egg. Use a large spatula to transfer the squares onto your prepared baking sheet.
- Bake the tarts for 22 to 25 minutes, until the puff pastry is golden and the feta cheese has begun to brown.
- Before serving, drizzle the tarts with a little bit of honey.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 6 Serving Size: 6 ServingsAmount Per Serving: Calories: 259
These look absolutely amazing! I’m thinking of making these for a girls pumpkin carving night at a friend’s house and just had a couple questions. There’s going to be a lot of food there so I feel these are a little big. Could I cut them down smaller? I don’t work with puff pastry much, so I wasn’t sure if they would bake up well at a smaller size. Also, I already have some bartlett pears on hand, could I use those instead of bosc? And finally, my friend has a small kitchen so I don’t want to be one more person taking up space in there, I live maybe 10 minutes tops from her house, do you think it would work to assemble these at my place and then just pop them in the oven when I get to hers? Thank you in advance for you help! I’m branching out in the cooking/baking world and I feel like I’m still incredibly naive.
Hi Katie! Thanks so much for visiting my blog, and thanks for the great questions! 🙂
As for the size of the tarts, what I would recommend is cutting the puff pastry into 12 squares, rather than 6. Then, instead of layering with 4-5 pear slices, I would do 1-2 pear slices, depending on how big your pear slices are. You don’t want the pear slices to take up the entire space of the puff pastry square. Instead, you want to be able to keep a small border along the edges of the puff pastry bare (so that the puff pastry can “puff ” up a bit along the edges).
Using bartlett pears will be perfectly OK. Sometimes they’re a bit juicier than bosc pears, so if yours are really juicy, maybe just dab them in a paper towel to get rid of excess juice.
These tarts will also transport just fine. I recommend preparing them on a piece of parchment paper at home. If you can take your baking sheet to your friend’s house, have the tarts ready on the parchment paper-covered baking sheet. Then when you get to your friend’s house, pop them in the freezer for 10 minutes (or fridge for 20 minutes) to chill before baking. Puff pastry loves to go into the oven right after it’s been chilled; it holds its shape better (as the butter in the pastry melts slower) and produces a flakier result. 🙂
Hope this helps! Please let me know if you need any more help XO
Thank you so much! This is all incredibly helpful!
Pear is my favorite fruit to bake with…viva la pear…viva la feasting!
Easy, simple, and delicious looking. I am so going to do this with another combination.
Love the video as well. You go girl!
PS: I am a fan of Oscars as well. 🙂
Thank you, Aysegul!! Aren’t the Oscars great?? A little Clooney, a little DiCaprio…what’s not to like?! 😉