Banana Brown Butter Tart

My dear friend Nikki and her husband were in town this weekend visiting from Portland and we were honored that they made time out of their busy schedule to have dinner at our place.  Greg cooked up his famous steak, oven fries and asparagus.

I was in charge of dessert and decided to give a recipe I've had in my "to try" notebook for a long time from Epicurious for Banana Brown Butter Tart.  It was good and quite easy, although the dough needs to be refrigerated overnight, so this can't be a spontaneous recipe. A couple of other tips - you press the dough into the pan instead of rolling it and I found it made a bit too much filling and over filled my pan, so don't try and use it all.

Crust  

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature  

⅓ cup sugar  

¼ teaspoon salt  

2 large egg yolks  

½ teaspoon vanilla extract  

1¼ cups all purpose flour

Filling  

6 large egg yolks  

¾ cup sugar  

¾ cup (1½ sticks) 

unsalted butter  

1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise  

1 cinnamon stick, broken in half  

¼ teaspoon salt  

½ cup all purpose flour

2 bananas, peeled, sliced 

powdered sugar

For Crust: Using electric mixer, beat butter, sugar, and salt in medium bowl to blend. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla. Add flour and mix just until moist clumps form. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.  

For Filling: Whisk yolks and ¾ cup sugar in medium bowl until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Melt butter in heavy medium skillet over medium heat. Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean; add bean. Add cinnamon and salt; cook over medium heat until butter browns, stirring frequently, about 8 minutes. Discard cinnamon and vanilla bean. Gradually whisk browned butter into yolk mixture. Whisk in flour. Cool.  

Press dough onto bottom and up sides of 9-inch square or round tart pan with removable bottom. Chill 30 minutes.  Preheat oven to 325°F. Line crust with foil. Fill with dried beans. Bake until crust is golden, about 23 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool. Arrange banana slices in crust. Spoon filling over bananas. Bake until golden brown and filling is set, about 35 minutes. 

Cool 30 minutes. Remove tart from pan. Dust tart with powdered sugar. Cut tart into squares or wedges. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.