

Here is my first rustic tart with pears, pecans and maple syrup. And yet, I’ve been seeing them go by on Insta for years.
I admit, with tarts, I’m used to lining the rings, making a clean and neat assembly, in short something very square that looks like me 😀 But ever since I set myself the challenge of improving at food photography, I’ve been discovering new things.
For example, these photos were taken to take part in the photo challenge by Pastry and travel on Instagram. The idea was to publish one photo a week following a theme. First, a product photo (I had chosen the pecans that make up this recipe), an action photo (cutting the pear) and finally a photo of the final recipe from 2 different angles.
Back to the recipe. I wanted something simple and I think it’s hard to get simpler than a rustic tart. No need for a mould, you roll out the pastry without it even being perfect, you lay on the filling, you fold the pastry over and that’s it. I told you it was simple!
I really wanted to work with pecans and here I paired them with pears, it works very well. But I wanted a little something extra and it was on seeing the recipe from Free the pickle that I decided to add maple syrup.
What’s more, I remembered that I still had a tin of maple syrup brought back straight from Canada by my son’s childminder, you can’t do better than that! You’ll see, maple syrup works really well with pears and pecans.
In short, this tart was quickly gobbled up, which shows how good it was 🙂

Ingredients & Method
2 components · Complete recipe
Pastry dough for the rustic pear, pecan and maple syrup tart
- 125 g (4.4 oz) flour
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 large pinch of salt
- 85 g (3 oz) cold butter
- 2 to 3 tablespoons cold water
- a little ground cinnamon
In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt, then add the cold butter cut into small pieces. Rub together with your fingertips until you get a crumble with very small pieces of dough.
Add a tablespoon of cold water while mixing, then a second tablespoon until you get a dough that holds together. If the dough is a little dry, you can add a third tablespoon of water. The dough is ready when you can form it into a ball.
Filling
- 2 pears
- 40 g (1.4 oz) ground pecans
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 10 g (0.4 oz) butter
Take the dough ball out of the fridge and leave to rest at room temperature for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, blitz the pecans in a food processor, then mix with 1 tablespoon of maple syrup. Set aside.
Roll the pastry out between 2 sheets of baking paper to a thickness of 3-4 mm.
Wash the pears and cut them into thin slices (I left the skin on for a nicer look — you can of course peel your fruit).
Spread the pecan and maple syrup mixture over the pastry, leaving a 4 cm (1.6 in) border. Arrange the pear slices attractively on top, then fold the pastry over the pears. Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F.
Using a pastry brush, coat the pears and pastry with a little maple syrup. Add a few small pieces of butter on top of the pears.
Bake for 30 minutes at 200°C / 400°F, then lower the oven temperature to 180°C / 350°F and continue baking for 15 minutes (keep an eye on it — you can place aluminium foil over the tart if it colours too quickly).
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