There is a small cafe there, nothing too extraordinary, but we stopped for a cuppa one day and decided to sample one of their bakewell tarts. It was far superior to anything Mr Kipling has to offer, so I vowed we should make one sometime for our local congregation of catholics.
Some 4 months later I finally got around to doing it. The first recipe to come up on my Google search was one of the GBBO's Mary Berry. It looked simple enough, so I gave it a shot.
She wanted me to do the pastry with my hands, but I instead my usual method of grating the butter into the flour. This makes it a good size for pastry purposes.
Nothing too exciting here, just a simple butter and flour mix.
Plus enough cold water to be able to bring it all together.
I put the lump that turned into inside my fridge, then rolled it out in a haphazard fashion to produce the following result:
One day I will master the art of rolling out pastry...just not today. I used the rolling pin to just roll along the top and cut off the edge. and then set my oven to heat up while I popped this in the fridge to help it keep its shape while baking.
Meanwhile I worked on the filling of melted butter and sugar...
Plus egg, ground almonds, and almond extract.
Frangipane, or something like that. I like to think of the cottage of Hansel and Gretel when I read that word - that in the windows she had frangipanes. You wouldn't be able to see anything out of frangipanes, but they'd sure taste nice.
Now that the oven was hot, I put a big sheet of baking paper on top of the pastry and in went my "pie weights". I've been baking this jar full of pulses for about 12 years now.
I baked the shell for a while with them in, then took out the weights and baking paper.
Then put the shell back in to dry out a bit more.
Onto the warm pastry went a thick layer of raspberry jam.
Then the frangipane mixture.
And last of all, a scattering of almonds.
Then into the oven at went. It said to check and cover it with foil to prevent over-browning halfway through the bake but I ignored that, resulting the following appearance:
Oh. Oops. It was well received nonetheless, and I think I may make it again sometime. Maybe next time I'll even remember to put the glaze drizzle on the top when it's cooling.
The recipe I used was as follows:
Ingredients
- For the shortcrust pastry
- 175g/6oz plain flour
- 75g/2½oz chilled butter
- 2-3 tbsp cold water
- For the filling
- 1 tbsp raspberry jam
- 125g/4½oz butter
- 125g/4½oz caster sugar
- 125g/4½oz ground almonds
- 1 free-range egg, beaten
- ½ tsp almond extract
- 50g/1¾oz flaked almonds
- For the icing
- 80g/2¾oz icing sugar
- 2½ tsp cold water
Preparation method
- To make the pastry, measure the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the water, mixing to form a soft dough.
- Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface and use to line a 20cm/8in flan tin. Leave in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6 (180C fan).
- Line the pastry case with foil and fill with baking beans. Bake blind for about 15 minutes, then remove the beans and foil and cook for a further five minutes to dry out the base.
- For the filing, spread the base of the flan generously with raspberry jam.
- Melt the butter in a pan, take off the heat and then stir in the sugar. Add ground almonds, egg and almond extract. Pour into the flan tin and sprinkle over the flaked almonds.
- Bake for about 35 minutes. If the almonds seem to be browning too quickly, cover the tart loosely with foil to prevent them burning.
- Meanwhile, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Stir in cold water and transfer to a piping bag.
- Once you have removed the tart from the oven, pipe the icing over the top, giving an informal zig zag effect.
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