Giant Plantain Tart

Easy Bake!

You can’t call yourself a Jamaican if you have never had a plantain tart. For me plantain tarts came in at a solid second place, since as a child my favorite Jamaican pastry hands down was the gizzard. That however would definitely not fall under the easy bake category. In contrast the plantain tart is quite simple, especially If you have the ready-made frozen pie shells.  And to make this even simpler why not make one giant tart that your friends and family can take a slice out of rather than the time consuming job of making individual little bite sized tarts; easy right?

 Traditionally red food coloring is used in this recipe; however when I made this I was not in my own kitchen. And the only colors available to me were blue, yellow and green. I figured a blue or green tart filling would be a little too weird. So I decided to play it safe and use the yellow food coloring just to enhance the natural yellow color of the plantain itself. 

About the taste….YUM! The crust is fool proof but the filling is a winner. The cinnamon, nutmeg and almond extract pair amazingly well with the plantain. I don’t know if you have ever had plantain porridge, but the flavor of the filling is reminiscent of the flavor of the porridge.  And there is an abundance of filling in each bite, unlike most store bought versions where there is more crust than filling.

Our Giant Plantain tart was enough to feed 6 persons. I’m sure it would feed more if the slices were smaller.

Ingredients(printable recipe)

Plantain Boil

2 plantains

½ tsp. Salt

1 tablespoon Vanilla

¼ cup Sugar

Filling

Cooked plantain

½ tsp. Almond extract

1 tsp. Nutmeg

½ tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. vanilla

1/3 cup brown Sugar

Food coloring

1 Pie crust

1 egg

White sugar

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees
• Fill a small pot with water and bring to a boil
• Add sugar, salt vanilla and plantains to the water, let It boil until the plantains are soft and fully cooked
• Strain the liquid place the plantains in a bowl add almond extract, nutmeg, vanilla, brown sugar and cinnamon mash the mixture into a smooth paste and allow to cool
• Beat one egg and roll out the pie crust into a large circle
• Fill half the pie crust with the cooled plantain filling leaving a ½ inch space at the edges
• Brush the edges with the egg fold over the pie crust and crimp the with a fork
• Slice three air holes in the top brush the entire thing with the egg wash and sprinkle liberally with white sugar on top.
• Bake until golden brown

Greedy tips:

• For speedy cooling pop the filling in the freezer for 5 minutes
• I use Pillsbury ready-made frozen pie crusts

Xoxo Greedygirl