Frangipane Tart – A Delicious Classic

Classic recipes stand the test of time and this one deserves to be made often with changing fruits of the season.  I prefer to use a fruit which has a little sharpness in order to contrast beautifully with the sweet almond filling such as these blackberries which were too sour to eat without sugar.  I’ve also made this tart a couple of weeks ago with cherries, a classic version but again with cherries not too sweet.  

What I like to do with this tart is to bake it only to the point it sets so the filling stays really soft.  It then contrasts wonderfully with the crisp falling apart pastry underneath and the sharpness of the fruit.  Soft, crisp, sweet, sharp…perfect.

Individual Tarts

I made the individual tarts to experiment with some leftover pastry and filling and they work perfectly for a picnic or packed lunch, easy to pick up with one hand and straight to the mouth.  This way they also use less fruit and filling making them more economical.

Apricots and cherries.

Cooking the Bottom

You’ll see from the slice below how the bottom of the pastry is cooked properly and it’s nice and brown.  You want that nice crisp contrast with the soft filling above it but don’t dry the pastry too much when blind baking otherwise you’ll have the other problem of very hard pastry and not one that crumbles easily.

Frangipane Tart

Add any fruit you like.  Cherries are classic but raspberries would also work well like the blackberries here.  Apricot is another classic fruit with this tart.

Makes 1 deep 23cm – 25cm / 9-10 inch tart tin.  Oven temperature for blind baking pastry 180C fan/ 190 C / 375F / gas 5.  Turn oven down for filling to 170C fan/ 180C / 356F/ gas 4

The filling is the easiest thing to remember. Equal amounts of sugar, butter, ground almond, eggs.

• 200g ground almonds
• 200g sugar
• 200g butter – room temperature
• 200g eggs (this is usually 4 eggs but can be just slightly under or over)

 

Pastry

• 250g plain flour
• 125-130g butter
• 1 egg (you can make it without)
• 1-2 tablespoons of water or milk

If you’re making the pastry by hand you want the butter soft at room temperature, rub the butter into the flour first.  In a little bowl beat the egg lightly with a fork to loosen it.   Then add the egg and mix it in and see if it needs 1 tablespoon of water.  Make the dough come together lightly wrap in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for an hour.  If you’re leaving the egg out you might need 2 tablespoons of liquid to bring dough together.

If you’re making the pastry in a food processor you want the butter fridge cold.  Here’s my entry on how to make pastry.

Mix all the filling together.

Blind bake the pastry.

Add the filling and place the fruit on top.  Depending on how deep your tin is you may have some filling left.  If you add too much filling like I did with this tart below the filling will puff up during baking and hide most of the fruit.  This is only a problem to how it looks but still tastes delicious.

While the pastry is still warm use a sharp knife and trim the edges.

Voilà!

If you want to make the top of the tart super shiny then warm some apricot jam and brush it over the tart.  I was happy to leave it as it was.

In the second tart I made below I didn’t use all of the filling and the fruit showed up better.

I used the extra filling to make these four little tarts, cherry (stoned) on top and apricot (peeled) below

Brushed with beaten egg.

Baked at 170C fan for 20-25mins.

These were roughly made, I was in a big hurry but you can take more care over them like letting the top pastry go under the bottom pastry and make a tidier edge. They have the look of savoury pies about them which I like, you don’t expect a sweet filling.  

It’s a good idea to mark the pastry differently to identify different fruits, easy to see afterwards.

If you look closely below you’ll see a tiny hole in the edge of the large tart, that was the 4 year old poking her finger while it was cooling down on the table.