French walnut pie recipe - tarte aux noix (2024)

We had a potluck dinner this Saturday at a friends house. As I was away most of the week for a conference on social businessEduard had the honour of preparing something for the dinner to bring along. He had been lurking at the big basket of walnuts we harvested earlier this yearfor a while, andhe therefore decided to try to bake a walnut pie.

In this post I’ll share his recipe with you, as the result was great! It looked good and it tasted good.I madea few quick pictures in the evening (before it was gone). On the inside it was equally beautiful. Definitely a cake we will make more often!

He started preparing the cake a day earlier. The crust needed to settle a bit and he also had to shell a few hundreds of walnuts. Apparently he then also decidedthat he would leave out a lot of the sugar that was recommended in the otherrecipes. Something I appreciate a lot, as you can imagine. If you have a bit of a sweet tooth though, but still want to try out the recipe, you can add a bit more sugar. But that’s really not necessary.

Anyhow, the day after he baked the crust and started building up the cake. And so on my way back from the conference I continuously got updates on the process. I couldn’t wait to reach the Grenoble train station, to try out the cake. Definitely a good way to kill some time on a long train trip.

Eduards walnut-pie recipe

For the dough

• 200gr flour
• 125gr butter
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 spoons of sugar
• 2 spoons of milk
• 2 spoons of walnut oil (or another neutral oil)a pinch of salt

Mix the flour with the diced butter and knead it until it’s mixed properly. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead it into a ball. Place the mix overnight in the refrigerator. The next day you place the dough in a low bake form on top of a paper baking sheet. Blind bake the crust with some dried beans or these ceramic pearlsfor about 20 minutes on 200 degrees (C).

For the filling

• 400gr shelled walnuts
• 4 eggs
• 100gr cane sugar
• 2 spoons honey
• 1/2 sachet vanilla sugar
• 55gr melted butter
• 2 spoons flour

Crush half of the walnuts in small pieces (in the blender for example). Mix everything, but the crushed walnuts. You keep the whole walnuts (that you will use in the end as a topping) aside as well.

Place the crushed walnuts on top of the (baked) pie-crust (don’t forget to remove the beans or the pearls) and on top of the crushed walnuts you can now place the mix of the other ingredients that you made earlier. Spreadthe whole walnuts on top .
Place the cake in the oven for about 20 minutes on 180 degrees (C). You are all set now!

The cake is served as is, but you can also make a vanilla sauce to accompany the cake.