And now for the details…

Hello folks, sorry it has been awhile. What better way to make a comeback than with a delicious dessert whose scent of butter, sugar, and vanilla fills your house when baking. And then wafts its way to your nostrils while sitting on the counter, waiting to be eaten?

Although I have called this a Frangipane tart, what we are making here is probably more aptly called a Bakewell tart. There are plenty of other styles of Frangipane tarts that make use of a much different style of crust. The Bakewell uses a shortbread dough as the base. Typically, slivered almonds are used on top, and icing sugar is sprinkled over the entire tart. In our case, we are filling the tart with raspberries and white chocolate instead. The final product is like having a nice, thick piece of shortbread cookie with a creamy, slightly chewy filling on top, dotted with tart but sweet raspberries and little pieces of white chocolate.

Let’s get to making, shall we?

Although there are several steps to this tart, the good news is that each individual step is not so terribly long, and it’s really the waiting while baking that is the hardest part.

Let’s start with the crust. Unlike other baking endeavours, the joy of this crust is that I don’t need to wait for the butter to soften! Since I am apparently inept in thinking ahead, this is great for me, since I use the cold butter to make the crust, AND it’s a reminder to put out the half cup of butter to soften for making the frangipane later (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, take out that other butter now…)

You have a couple of options here. You can make the crust in a food processor, but because my food processor lives in our basement when not in use because of lack of kitchen space, I get super lazy and find alternatives to hauling it upstairs… in this case, I used a pastry cutter. If you have neither of these things, you can go old school and use knives, or even your fingers. Whatever you’re using, add the flour, sugar, salt and butter together first, and either give it a few zips with the food processor, or dig in with the pastry cutter, until the butter is cut into small-ish pieces, about pea-sized. For this particular recipe, I used kosher salt, and a decent amount of it. I did this on purpose, since I knew that between the raspberries, white chocolate, and frangipane, the overall tart was going to be very much on the sweet side, and the salty bites you are going to get with the kosher salt in the crust will provide a nice contrasting flavour, rather than just a whole lot of sweet.

Once the first four ingredients have been cut together, add the vanilla and egg yolk. For this, I got right in there with my hands. Mix them together until the pastry just starts to form up. It will still be pretty shaggy, but take the entire thing and pour it into your tart tin. In this case, we are going to use a 10″ tart tin, with a loose base. That loose base will allow us to easily remove the tart once it’s baked and leave that beautiful, fluted look to the crust. Not to mention that thanks to that fluted look, we get more surface area of the crust that bakes, resulting in those crunchy, buttery bites when eating the crust… Oh no… I’m drooling and we haven’t even gotten past the crust yet. This wait is going to be excruciating.

Anyhoo… now that the dough is in the tart tin, press it into a crust in the tin, including up against the sides. Try using both thumbs at the top corner of the tin, to get the edges pushed together. Was mine perfectly even at the end? Not even close. But… my end goal is taste, not looks, so I wasn’t too fussed. Poke holes into the bottom of the crust with either a toothpick or a skewer. This will help the base bake a bit more consistently, as well as help reduce the likelihood of it puffing up when we blind bake it.

Before we bake, place the crust in the refrigerator for about an hour. Then, preheat your oven to 375ºF/190ºC. Line the crust with aluminum foil, and place either some pie weights, or dried beans, to weigh it down so the crust does not puff up while baking. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, then remove it from the oven, take out the aluminum foil with the weights/beans, and put the crust back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes, or until the whole thing is golden brown.

Once it is baked, take out the crust and let it cool completely. You can even do this the day before, and let it sit until you are ready to make the rest of the tart.

Next is our frangipane. A friend of mine likened it to marzipan, and it does have some similarities. The base for both are ground almonds, and combine that with the sweetness and almond extract flavouring, and they are quite close. But frangipane is more of a pastry cream, made with almond flour, butter, eggs, and sugar, while marzipan is more of a candy, using almond flour, confectioner’s (icing) sugar and egg whites or corn syrup.

Before we make the frangipane, preheat the oven to 350ºF/175ºC. To get the frangipane started, cream together the butter (remember that butter that we remembered take out and soften at the beginning??) and sugar until light yellow and fluffy. I would recommend doing this in a stand mixer or with a handheld mixer. Next, mix in your eggs one at a time, alternating with adding in the almond flour approximately a third at a time. Finally, mix in the regular flour, vanilla and almond extract. Pour the frangipane into your tart shell, and then add the raspberries and white chocolate directly into the frangipane. I tried to make it at artful-ish as I could, hopefully you can appreciate the effort! The frangipane is fairly thick, so you may have to push the fruit into it to get it to set. If your white chocolate is poking out a little bit, that’s okay too. The frangipane will puff up and mostly cover it as it cooks.

Depending on how well browned you got your crust when you blind baked it, you might need to place foil around the edge to protect them to keep them from getting burned. Place the tart in the oven and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the frangipane has puffed and turned a golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Then pop it out of the tin from the bottom, cut and serve!

Happy eating.