Fruity Frangipane Tarts

At this time of year I try to think of recipes to showcase all the wonderful fruit that’s ripe and ready for harvesting. As autumn sets in, early varieties of pear are beginning to ripen on the trees, the hedgerows bordering our garden are laden with plump juicy blackberries and this year’s autumn raspberry crop is just starting to turn red and attract the birds. We try to freeze most of this fruit as soon as we have picked it so that we have a year-round supply at our fingertips, but we also enjoy eating it in season too.

I decided to make two varieties of frangipane tart – the first one pear and orange and the second blackberry and raspberry – although the basic recipe is the same for both. The filling for a frangipane tart is a simple sponge mixture, but with most of the flour being replaced by ground almonds. This makes a lovely moist filling with a delicate flavour.

Ingredients:

The Sweet Orange Pastry I used for this recipe may be found in my blog archive for November 2015, or listed under “pastry”. It’s a useful recipe that I use as the basis for anything requiring a sweet pastry and it never lets me down. I used a half quantity to line 6 x 10cm tart tins.

You will also need a few teaspoons of raspberry jam to spread over the pastry case bases and some fruit of your choice to top the frangipane mixture with before baking. A scattering of flaked almonds may be used as decoration.

For the frangipane filling you will need:

100g of softened butter

100g of caster sugar

2 large free range eggs

100g of ground almonds

25g of plain flour

a few drops of almond extract

Method:

put all the ingredients for the frangipane filling into a large mixing bowl and beat everything together until well blended
preheat the oven to 180°C
line the individual flan tins with pastry. Try to roll the pastry as thin as possible so that it will be crisp and almost biscuit-like when baked

spread a teaspoon of raspberry jam onto the base of each pastry case
for my pear and orange tarts I divided the mixture into two and added the zest of 1 orange to one half of the mixture before putting it into the pastry cases
divide the frangipane mixture between the pastry cases and top each one with a scattering of your chosen fruit. Scatter the surface with a few flaked almonds

bake the tarts for about 25 – 30 minutes, or until the sponge is golden brown and springs back to the touch (if you’ve used larger or smaller tins than those I used you’ll need to adjust the baking time accordingly)
leave the tarts in their tins to cool on a cooling rack for a little while
remove the tarts from their tins and dredge them with a dusting of icing sugar