Plum Tart

Recipes are really draining to write in their entirety on here. It fosters my inner procrastinator.

But it’s kind of pretty so I want to show it and if I show it I have to share the recipe. Not to mention that if I don’t write it soon I might also forget what I put into it.

Fine.

Plum Tart

MATERIALS:

Dough

pie crust or pate sucree (I just used the leftover pie crust from the blueberry pie my mom made because blanching almonds and making a frangipane for the first time is stressful enough. So this recipe is really just for pie crust….yay for Marie Calendar)

Frangipane – (adapted from Dessert First)

6 Tbs butter (room temperature)

2/3 cups sugar

¾ cup ground blanched almonds (which means maybe like ½ cup regular almonds that you blanch. Because idiots like me would measure out over a cup and be like “oh, the particulate almond meal is totally gonna be more compact because they’re smaller bits and will occupy less airspace so you better overshoot the ground amount when measuring the whole almond amount”. And then I had a whole tupperware filled with extra almond meal because duh, non-compacted meal will be MORE aerated and that’s the end of that story.

2 tsp flour

t tsp cornstarch

1 large egg & 1 egg white

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp almond extract  (although honestly, it was a little too almond-extract-y tasting. I think I would have preferred more vanilla. So if you’re into the almond extract flavor, go for this ratio. Otherwise, maybe do an even split, 1.5 each vanilla and almond? Or instead, what I sorta wish I’d done, was put some actual fruit juice in instead. So maybe, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp almond, and 1 tsp plum juice (or whatever fruit, really).

Plums

2-7 mandolinned plums (it depends on your tart size. Mine was about a 4 inch tart and used almost 2 plums. But then again I have SO much extra frangipane. I’d recommend having a bunch extra do that you can just make the larger tart)

PROCEDURE:

1. Blanch your almonds by putting them in a pot of boiling water until they look wrinkly and pruny (maybe, 5 minutes? I was being angsty and stirring the whole time, so I wasn’t really clocking it in).

2. Pour them into a colander, run them under cold water, and pop them out of the shells (it’s like edamame. Weirdly satisfying, easy to accidentally lose ‘em into the sink).

3. Pat dry, then put them in your food processor. Grind until it’s all fine and mealy. The finer, the better, honestly.

4. Remove from processor and put into a bowl.

5. Food process butter and sugar until smooth.

6. Scrape down sides, add the almonds back in and process until blended.

7. Add flour and cornstarch.

8. Then egg and egg white until totally blended and smooth (don’t over-process the eggs if possible though. We don’t need meringues here, please and thanks)

9. Add in extracts (and fruit juice, perhaps?) just to combine. It’ll be kinda liquidy, but that’s fine.

10. Preheat the oven to 375˚F.

11. Roll your crust out into a few millimeters thick, and then arrange your crust in the pie dish. Poke some holes into it with a fork (as with pie-crusts).

12. Pour frangipane in until the shell is about ½ full.

13. Roll plums! Twigg does an awesome job at showing in pictures (after all, it was the inspiration for this tart), so start with rolling as many as you can, and once it’s so big you can’t really hold it, just put it into the tart and nestle/center it in the frangipane. Place more plum slices around the edges of your flower so that the whole tart will be covered in plum.

14. Loosen the center of the flower a bit so that it won’t just be a tight bundle of plum; you want the petals to fall and wilt back into the tart. I ended up pouring a little extra frangipane in the center too, just to cover the base of the petals so that they’d connect to the rest of the tart. Don’t let the frangipane drown your plum petals!! Make sure the plums don’t sink. It’s sort of finicky. This part took longer for me than expect. If you want, lightly sprinkle some sugar atop the plum petals.

(this is PRE-adding the little bit of frangipane to the center… use your best judgement)

15. Then bake for….20 minutes for a smaller tart, 30 (about how long mine took), to 40-45 for a full size, probably.

16. Let cool. Consume.