Bakewell tart

Who doesn't love a Bakewell tart? It encompasses everything that's a pudding and an afternoon tea cake, crossing the boundaries, ticking all the boxes. 

What I love about this tart is that I can rustle it up, most of the time I always have ingredients in stock. And actually it's quite inexpensive to make, only costly bit is the ground almonds. Some recipes say to use more than others. 

Well within a few days of each other I've followed two different recipes (I got the bakewell bug!). I was interested to see which one I preferred and which one Siân (Egg) liked the best. 

The first recipe was Mary Berry's, I pretty much followed it word for word except the wrong sized flan tin was used (I only had a 23cm, she uses a 20cm), I was concerned this'd cause a problem when rolling out my pastry, trying to make it stretch. The only other addition was the icing she drizzles over the tart at the end, I felt this wasn't necessary to do this (more like I couldn't be bothered).

So the end result was a lovely tart, v thin crisp pastry with very buttery, dense, chewy filling (bordering on "macaroony"). Very pleasant indeed, needless to say the tart was gone the very next day. I was compelled to make another in the week, but I needed to source a contrasting recipe. 

I came across Tamasin Day Lewis' recipe, I love her style of cooking, owning two of her books, I admired her series years ago....Tamasin's weekends. There's the most amazing recipe in it called Tasmanian lemon pie, a wobbly soufflé type pudding which would be complimentary after any roast dinner. I've made it umpteen times (I've tweaked it to my liking though). 

In her recipe she uses more eggs and slightly less ground almonds. She says to add an extra egg yolk to frangipan mix but I decided not to. The fact that there were two extra eggs than Mary's recipe, this would make a big difference. 

I can call this recipe my own as I've changed the quantities of key ingredients and played with the method somewhat. End result was pretty damn good. But stupidly I forgot to put jam in (was rushing as I had to do school run). And although it'd be nice it was in, you don't really miss it. I've made a lovely dense almondy tart, perfect on it's own or warm with a dollop of clotted cream. 

For the pastry

170g plain flour

Pinch salt

75g butter

2-3 tbsp iced water

For the filling 

1 tbsp raspberry jam

110g butter or stork margarine 

110g vanilla sugar

110g ground almonds

3 eggs

1tsp almond extract

A handful of flaked almonds 

Combine flour, salt in a large bowl. Rub butter in until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in iced water to bring mixture together into a dough. Roll pastry out to line a 23 cm tart tin and chill for 30 mins in fridge. Preheat oven to 180C. 

After tart case has chilled, fork a few marks on base. Blind bake in oven for 15 mins then for another 5 mins uncovered to crisp up base. 

Melt butter/marg gently on heat. Whisk together sugar, ground almonds, eggs and almond extract. Pour in warm butter and whisk until smooth. 

Spoon jam over tart case. Pour almond filling into tart. Scatter a handful of flaked almonds over top. Bake in oven for 30-35 mins until lightly browned. 

Enjoy!!!! You'll be wanting to make another one. 

Anne