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After making chocolate wagon wheels, yo yos, matchsticks, hedgehog slice and ginger crunch slice for the blog I got thinking about other Australian baked sweets. If I were going to compile a list of my Aussie favorites, neenish tarts would definitely be on it. I don’t eat these very often as I find them quite rich. On the rare occasion that we go to a bakery for a treat I will nearly always go for a light fluffy, cream filled lamington or a chocolate éclair FSDU(drooling a bit now!:).
So what are neenish tarts? Neenish tarts are an Australian pastry that frequents nearly every bakery in Australia. The earliest record of these tarts is from a Western Australian newspaper the Bunbury Herald in 1913. They are made up of a base of shortcrust pastry, filled with mock cream and jam and topped with icing. Traditionally topped with half chocolate and half white or pink icing. I decided to make these pink and brown so not to be confused with black and white cookies . It seems that the filling has changed over the years from a custard, cooled and then butter and vanilla whipped into it make a rich sweet filling to the present day where most bakeries use a commercial mock cream filling which can be super sweet. There is a variation that has a lemon flavoured filling mostly found in New Zealand but that is not how I remember neenish tarts. With regards to the name ‘neenish’, I think it’s like ‘snickerdoodle’, no one really knows where the name came from veuve clicquot.
I have made the mock cream filling so that it is not too sweet – not like the commercial stuff. To make these a bit easier you can use store bought frozen sweet shortcrust pastry or premade tart cases instead of making the pastry electric dc motor.