Rustic Rhubarb Tart

Rhubarb pie is required for my husband's birthday, and he was very concerned when I told him he was getting rhubarb tarts, instead. But no reason for concern -- THESE ARE AMAZING!

The filling is great - rhubarb and vanilla bean and sugar. It cooked up just as described - no water needed. The recipe calls for dark brown sugar. That is hard to find here, so I used light brown and added 2 T molasses.

The dough was not so easy to work with. I used masa harina as the corn flour, and followed the recipe as indicated. The dough come together OK, but I had lots of trouble forming the filled tarts. The instructions are to spoon the filling in, and bend up the sides. When I did that, they split at the bottom, and the juice started leaking out. I had better luck when I refrigerated the dough before forming, and when I bent the sides up, reinforced the bend site, and then added the rhubarb.

The flavor of the corn-based crust was amazing. I guess it was worth the effort it took to make it.

update: A repeat of this recipe was just as good. We refrigerated the pastry dough as soon as it was made, and only took out a portion as we formed each tart. We also used about 1T more butter. It worked much better.