Walnut Caramel Tart

I’ve made a lot of cakes lately, large and small, and decided I wanted to make a tart. I bought a large bag of walnut halves last week, so decided they were just what I needed. My lovely friend who runs a cake shop gave me a few more of her recipes when we met up recently, and this tart is one of hers.

You can use shop bought short crust pastry or make your own – enough for a 25cm tart tin, so it’s quite a good sized tart. I made 12oz /350g of pastry – that is 350g of flour and 175g of fat, and I used a mixture of sunflower margarine and Trex, but you could use all butter for a very short pastry. This was just the right amount for the tin.

The tart’s made in 2 stages, the baked part with the eggs, sugar, butter and finely chopped walnuts and the topping with the walnut halves topped with caramel. So if you like walnuts, this is the tart for you!

Preheat oven 180C/gas4      You need a 25cm tart tin [with sides at least 2.5 cms]

You beat 2 eggs and 100g of caster sugar together till pale and fluffy using an electric beater or a stand mixer. Add 100g of finely chopped walnuts and 60g of melted butter and gently mix together.

Roll out your pastry to fit the tin and spoon the mixture in.

Bake for about 30 mins till golden

 

For the caramel – melt 150g of caster sugar in a pan till brown then pour in 100ml of very hot crème fraiche and mix. Boil this till it’s not grainy then add 20g of warm melted butter and stir together.

Decorate your tart with 100g of walnut halves and pour over the caramel and leave to set.

Quite a sweet tart with a really nutty flavour. The caramel topping finishes it off.

Galette de Rois

I wanted to make the traditional Galette de Rois, to celebrate the arrival of the 3 Kings. We ate many of these during our time in France, but only from the boulangerie or the supermarket. My friend who has the teashop, always makes one, and she kindly gave me her recipe. There's a bean or feve in the galette, and the person who finds it in their piece, gets to wear a crown and be king or queen for the day.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

You take a sheet of butter puff pastry and fill it with a delicious almond cream.

For the cream - you need to beat 125g of butter till nice and creamy. Put 125g of caster sugar, 130g of ground almonds,1 tbspn of cornflour and a pinch of salt in a bowl and mix together.Add this to the butter and mix till smooth. Add 1 drop of almond extract then 2 eggs, one at a time. Put the cream in the fridge covered with clingfilm for an hour or overnight, to chill.
Roll out a pack of  puff pastry [about 500g] and divide into 2. Roll again and cut out 30cm circle using a plate. Then roll out again and cut out a slightly larger circle - about 6mm bigger than the other one.
Put the smaller circle on some baking parchment on a baking sheet. Mix an egg yolk with a tbspn of water or milk then lightly brush it round the edge of the circle. Put the cream into the middle and spread up to the egg wash. 
Put the bean in, but not in the middle, put it near an edge and press it in. Put the 2nd pastry circle on top of the first and smooth it gently over the cream not to have any air pockets; press it down sides gently. Score the pastry with the back of a knife to make a pattern.
Brush the top with eggwash, but don't let it drip over the edges or the pastry won't rise as much. Put 5 holes in the top - 1 in the middle and 4 near the corners. Put the galette in the fridge for an hour or so on the baking sheet.
Bake for 30 mins then take galette out and mix 1 tbspn of icing sugar with 1 tbspn of hot water and brush this over the top and put back in the oven for a minute to give it a nice shiny finish.

I should have made the pattern on the top deeper, as it didn't come out very well. The galette has a really lovely creamy filling, and the pastry is crisp and a good contrast to the soft filling.

Chocolate Tart with Nougat

A very easy, quick dessert.
My younger daughter came yesterday. She is a chocaholic, so dessert had to be something chocolate. Recently I was given a bar of pistachio nougat so decided to use this with the tart, but any nougat would work as it's only the topping.

I made a sweet pastry using 200g of flour, 120g butter and 70g of caster sugar, binding it together with a beaten egg. Put in the fridge for 30 mins.

Preheat oven 190C/gas5 and grease a tart tin or flan dish.

Roll the pastry out to fit the tin/dish and bake blind in the oven for 20 mins. leave to cool.

Grate 200g of dark chocolate finely. Bring 20cl of single cream to the boil, take off the heat and add the chocolate. Carefully mix together and leave to cool. Spread it over the pastry case and smooth it out. Put in the fridge for about 20 mins. 

Chop up 100g of nougat and use it to sprinkle over the chocolate tart.

Sorry, am still having problems with my camera, so photo is a bit blurred! It's an easy basic chocolate tart to make, and it can have whatever topping you fancy - chopped up Mars bar, Maltesers, rosettes of double cream, little Easter eggs at Easter etc. -  the sky's the limit!

Plum tart

This is a really quick dessert I did to use up some plums which were going soft. It was in a supplement in Woman's Weekly magazine ages ago, and I've made it with various fruit - apricots, pears, apples as well as the original plums. I add cinnamon as we love it. It uses bought puff pastry and store cupboard ingredients, plus the fruit.

You need 500g puff pastry, 10 plums which you halve and stone, 4tbspn ground almonds, 1 tbspn icing sugar, 1 tbspn vegetable oil, a tspn cinnamon, about 55g flaked almonds, 2 tbspn honey and milk or beaten egg to brush around the edges of the pastry.
You can also use 100g marzipan which you grate, but I didn't use any.

You preheat oven 190C/gas5 and you need a baking sheet.

Roll the pastry out to a 30x20cm rectangle. Score it 2cm in from the edge all the way round, but don't cut it through.
Put the ground almonds, icing sugar and oil in a blender a make into a paste. I used a little more than 1 tbspn oil as my paste wouldn't come together. Then you spread this over the pastry, inside the lines you've scored, and sprinkle with the grated marzipan. Put the plum halves face down on top of this and sprinkle over the flaked almonds. Drizzle with some honey. Brush the edges with milk or egg wash.and bake for 25-30 mins till the pastry's golden and the plums are soft.
Cut into 8 slices when cool.

A nice easy, quick dessert.

Jenny's Peach Tart

My friend Jenny came to stay recently, and as usual, brought me a few recipes she thought I'd like. We've always exchanged recipes, and her cheesecake is legendary in my family.
I have to say that I cheated a bit, as I used tinned peaches because I couldn't find any ripe ones in the shops; it still tasted great. It's very simple - peaches in frangipane. You can use bought pastry too. Jenny said that it tastes better if you grind whole almonds, instead of buying ground almonds ready done. It didn't take long to whizz them in the food processor.

                           400g shortcrust pastry [can use butter JusRol if you're feeling lazy]

                            200g whole blanched almonds

                            150g caster sugar

                            125g  unsalted butter

                            2  eggs

                            5 peaches, skins removed and halved (or you can use tinned - 10 halves!]

                            5tbspn apricot jam

                             icing sugar to dust

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Grease a 23cm loose-bottomed tin

 Line the tin with the pastry, leaving edges overlapping and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes.

 Filling:

Whizz the almonds in a food processor till they look like coarse breadcrumbs. Set aside. 

Beat butter and sugar together till light and fluffy, then add the eggs and almonds. Mix together.

Don't put it in the fridge or you'll never be able to spread it on the pastry! 

 Line the chilled pastry with foil and beans, and blind bake for 20 minutes. 

Trim off the overhanging pastry. 

Reduce the oven temperature to 150C/ gas 2. 

Add the almond filling and arrange the peaches on top.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, till golden brown. 

Melt the apricot jam in a saucepan and brush over the top of the tart, then dust with icing sugar. 

Serve warm with cream or ice cream.

I love the texture of frangipane - the soft almond mixture, then the contrast with the peaches and the crunch of the pastry. This would work with other fruit like plums, apricots or pears, but the fruit needs to be able to hold it's shape when cooked, so soft fruit wouldn't be any good. Another idea would be to make individual tartlets.  Suelle from Mainly Baking blog made some lovely gooseberry frangipane tartlets. Have a look here. Oh, my idea of not using soft fruit isn't valid!

I have a lovely fluted tartlet tin, so think I'll make some tartlets using a different fruit, which I'd slice before adding to the frangipane mixture.

Plum tart

As I said in a recent post, plums are one of my favourite fruit. I love making crumbles and tarts with them, but wanted to find something different to try.
This recipe is from a Woman's Weekly magazine; it's one of the hundreds of recipes I have to sort out in my cuttings folder!
I bought a punnet of plums from the supermarket which were marked as seconds, and they were really hard. Anyway I thought I'd use them in my new recipe, and they turned out soft and juicy.

250g plain flour
170g chopped up butter
1 egg yolk

I used my processor to make the pastry, putting in the flour, butter and egg yolk and adding a tbspn of water and blitzing till the pastry started to come together. Roll out and line the flan tin and chill for 30 mins. it's a very short pastry and breaks easily, but is easily patched up.

Filling:
1 tspn cinnamon
2 tbspns soft brown sugar
750g plums, stoned and quartered

Topping:
1 egg + a yolk
125g creme fraiche
45g soft brown sugar

Preheat oven 200C/gas6
Grease a 28cm shallow flan tin

Remove flan tin from the fridge; mix the cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle over the pastry base.

Arrange the plums, cut side up and pack them together. If there's any left over, put them skin side up on top in a pattern. I just about had enough fruit to fill the tin.

Mix the ingredients of the topping together and spoon over the plums.

Bake for 25-30 mins till lightly browned.

I really like the flavour of the tart; the cinnamon and sugar come through in the background and the texture of the creme fraiche topping is creamy and not too sweet [for my taste anyway]. I'll certainly make this again, and it would work with other fruit like apples, cherries etc.

Apple and almond tart

I have some apples to use up, so decided to hunt through my collection of apple recipes to find something different. This recipe is from a booklet I had many years ago in a magazine called 'Home and freezer Digest' which sadly no longer exists. I thought I'd also use this as my offering to Ruth's [of 'Pink Whisk'] October challenge -  to use apples in a recipe - which you'll find here

Pastry:

75g butter

175g plain flour

25g ground almonds

1 egg yolk

15ml cold water

1/4 tspn almond essence

Topping:

115g plain flour

1/2 tspn mixed spice

50g butter in cubes

50g light demerara sugar

50g flaked almonds

Filling:

675g cooking apples

25g sultanas

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

I used a food processor to blend the flour and butter for the pastry, then stirred in the sugar and ground almonds. Whisk the egg yolk, water and almond essence together, then add them to the mixture and make into a nice soft dough. Put into the fridge for about 20 mins.

For the topping - put the flour and spice in a bowl, and rub in the butter.Add the sugar and almonds.

Roll the pastry out to fit a 23cm loose bottomed flan tin. I liked Mary Berry's advice on the GBBO masterclass last week - she took the base out of the flan tin, put it on the worktop and rolled the pastry out over it; you could see the base through the pastry so you had a good idea of the size you needed. I didn't try it! Let the pastry chill for about 1/4 hour.

Peel, core and slice the apples thinly then arrange them in circles in the pastry case. Sprinkle over the sultanas and almonds. The tart will seem very full, but the filling will drop a bit when cooking. Cover this with the topping, pressing it down lightly. Bake for 25-30 mins till top is golden and the apples are soft. Cool in tin for 10 mins. If you want, you can dust the top with icing sugar. I think it finishes it off.

We liked this very much; the contrast between the soft apple and the crunchy topping was delicious. One to add to my notebook. I also liked the slight almond flavour in the pastry.