Recipe of the week………Fresh Fig Frangipane Tart
I love this time of year when the figs are coming to the end
of their season and you can get them dirt cheap, I picked up a punnet of 1kg
fresh figs for R22, so I will make jam out of a couple for cheese boards, I
have made this beautiful Fig Frangipane Tart as the dessert of the day, and I
shall preserve some as fig preserve is amazing, I think I will also do a nice
fig salad as a special running over this weekend.
Difficulty: Medium to Hard
Serves: 4-6
Prep Time: 25 Minutes
Cooking Time: 40 Minutes
Ingredients
Short Crust Pastry
500g Cake Flour
400g butter cubed and frozen for about 1hour
1tsp white sugar
1 tsp fine salt
½ cup ice cold water
Method
Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor and then add
the butter and until mixture resembles bread crumbs, with pea size pieces of
butter. Add ice water 1 TBSP at a time, mixing until mixture just begins to
clump together. If you pinch some of the crumbly dough and it holds together,
it's ready. If the dough doesn't hold together, add a little more water and
pulse again. Note that too much water will make the crust tough.
Remove dough from the food processor and place in a mound on
a clean surface. Work the dough just enough to form the disks, do not
over-knead. You should be able to see little bits of butter in the dough. These
small chunks of butter are what will allow the resulting crust to be flaky.
Sprinkle a little flour around the disks. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and
refrigerate at least 1 hour, and up to 2 days.
Remove one crust disk from the refrigerator. Let sit at room
temperature for 5-10 minutes in order to soften just enough to make the rolling
out a bit easier.
Take you short crust roll it out and line your 24cm tart
tin, poke a couple of hole in the bottom of the pastry with a fork and then
blind bake it at 180˚c for 15 minutes.
Ingredients
Frangipane Filling
125g Butter
125g Caster Sugar
2 Whole Eggs
1 Egg yolk
1 TBSP Almond Liqueur (optional)
Zest of 1 lemon
120g Ground up Almonds (just buy flakes and blitz them in
the food processor until fine)
40g Cake Flour
10 Rip Fresh Figs
Method
Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy, then
add the eggs one at a time only adding another one in when the previous one has
incorporated totally. Add the almond liqueur and lemon zest if using. Now fold
in the ground almonds and cake flour until incorporated, be gentle so that you
don’t knock out all the air.
Spread this mixture on the ready baked short crust base
until it reaches ¾ the way up the sides, cut the figs in half and arrange them
in the paste with the cut side facing up.
Bake in the oven at 160˚c for about 30 minutes. Take out and
let cool slightly cut and serve with some mascarpone mixed with some fresh mint
or even some crème Fraisch or just whipped cream.
Bon Apeptite
