Photography: Rochelle Eagle / Styling: Lee Blaylock
This frangipane tart featuring pear is utterly scrumptious and comes from the kitchen of food writer and cookbook author Sophie Hansen. A frangipane tart is a classic French dessert with a pastry base and a filling made from almond-flavoured custard. Frangipane filling is also used in desserts such as Bakewell tart, a classic English tart. This one is topped with poached pears for a seasonal treat. It’s absolutely divine served warm with cream or ice-cream.
For other tart recipes, try our grenadine poached pear frangipane tart, our rhubarb and strawberry almond tart or check out our collection of tart recipes.
Ingredients
Method
For the pastry, combine the flour, salt and icing sugar on a clean work surface. Bring into a small mound and make a well in the centre. Fill this with the butter and a splash of the chilled water. Use the heel of your hands to bring the mixture together, working the butter into the flour, adding more water as needed. Keep working until you have a rough dough. Shape into a disc, cover with biodegradable plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. You could also make the pastry in a food processor.
For the frangipane, blitz almonds in a food processor to a coarse crumb. Add the remaining ingredients and blitz to a lovely paste. Refrigerate until ready to assemble.
Preheat oven to 220°C (200°C fan-forced). Line a baking tray with baking paper and dust work surface with flour.
For the poached pears, combine the water, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla in a large saucepan over medium–high heat. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Add the pears, cover with a circle of baking paper (to prevent discolouration), then poach for 10–15 minutes or until the pears are tender. Leave to cool in the saucepan.
To assemble, using a rolling pin, roll out your chilled pastry dough to a 30cm × 25cm rectangle about 3mm thick. Carefully transfer the dough to your prepared baking tray.
Spread the base of your pastry with the frangipane mix, leaving a 4–5cm border all around – the frangipane layer should be about 1½ cm thick. Top the frangipane with the drained pear halves, gently removing the stalks if they are still attached. Now bring the pastry edges in, pinching and folding them together at each corner.
For the egg wash, mix the egg and cream and use a pastry brush to brush the mixture over the pastry edges. Sprinkle pears with the extra caster sugar and bake for 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden. Serve warm or at room temperature, with cream or ice-cream.
This is an edited extract from The Baker’s Book edited by Ruby Goss, with photography by Rochelle Eagle and illustrations by Beci Orpin, published by Murdoch Books, $45.
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