Saturday 15 December 2012

Cranberry Frangipane Tartlets

With a baking challenge in mind, I first had to think what I would bake.  Its dreadful, the more books one has, the more difficult the task of deciding.  In the end I thought about Christmas, and preparing a nice tart with my daughter in law in mind.  She loves things Christmassy, but does not like mincemeat.

This is how I came up with this recipe:

First make your Cranberry conserve.  I used 250g fresh cranberries, the juice and finely grated rind of an orange, star anise, and 250g sugar.  I cooked up the cranberries in the juice until just soft, and left them a day for all the flavours to mature, then added the sugar, and completed the preserve.

With rich shortcrust pastry well rested overnight in the fridge, and a lovely frangipane, the tarts were assembled:


Complete with a sprinkling around the edge of almonds



they are ready to go into the oven, and bake on a preheated tray to avoid the soggy bottom


given a light dressing of caster sugar, and I avoided putting on top of that some more conserve, as that would spoil the pale finish, they were ready, and very delicious too!


I've since heard that a friend in London will love these, so there will be more batches of this for Christmas and for our next visit.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Noelle!

    I can certainly testify to the fact that these tartlets were delicious! I had them on my way to Cologne last weekend and couldn't help telling my friends on the train how good it was! Recipe please!

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  2. For a keen baker like you, just follow the trail...rich shortcrust pastry, making sure you use all the rests. Standard Frangipane, and careful baking.

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  3. Whilst I can make up for my lack of baking knowledge by lurking around other people's baking blogs I certainly can't do the same with the execution as it comes with practice. Just wondering if reusing shortcrust pastry would risk it being overworked and taste chewy/hard?

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  4. Obviously cut offs will not be topnotch....but if you gather them into a ball, shape, chill, use, chill again they are perfectly acceptable. Always keep a light touch, and resting avoids the gluten developing too much. I used my cut offs to make some mince pies, which warmed up, and no one would have known it was reworked shortcrust.

    Another tip is to sprinkle a light covering of semolina between the pastry and the preserve.

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