February 2024 / DELICIOUS BITES

fig hazelnut frangipane tart

25 Feb 2024

The front cover of Danielle Alvarez's new recipe book, Recipes for a Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking, features a beautiful looking fig and hazelnut frangipane tart. Whilst I've made many fig frangipane tarts before, Danielle's recipe uses hazelnut praline as the base for the frangipane filling. I was intrigued and decided to give this a try.

I find the flavour of roasted hazelnuts a bit overpowering, so I decided to use a combination of hazelnuts and almonds. My little mini food processor doesn't have enough power to turn nut brittle into praline, so I ground the brittle into meal and used that instead of regular almond meal.

I used my regular recipe and I didn't think the end result would differ so greatly, but it did. The frangipane filling is quite intense. Next time I'd add a layer of fig jam to the base before topping it with the hazelnut almond frangipane filling just to amp up the figgy quotient. It's what I'd planned to do but the figs I'd bought weren't quite ripe enough to make into jam. They were however a week later and I now have 2 pots of fig and earl grey jam lurking in my pantry. If you don't have fig jam, apricot jam would also be a lovely addition.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 10 x33cm recatangular tart. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Fig hazelnut frangipane tart - makes one rectangular tart

Pastry
¼ cup icing sugar
¼ cup almond meal
1⅓ cups plain flour
Pinch salt
110 g (4 oz) cold unsalted butter, diced
1 egg, lightly beaten
Cold water

Hazelnut and almond praline
50g blanched hazelnuts
50g blanched almonds
50g caster sugar
1 tablespoon water

Frangipane
100g unsalted butter
50g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg

1 quantity hazelnut and almond praline
1 tbs plain flour
Pinch salt
2 tsp rum

Topping
8 small figs, halved lengthwise
1 tablespoon sugar
Apricot jam to glaze

Pastry
To make the pastry, combine all the dry ingredients in a food processor, and whiz for a few seconds until well combined and free of lumps. Add the cold butter and whiz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg and sufficient cold water and whiz until a soft dough just starts to form around the blade. Remove the dough from the food processor and gather the pastry into a ball; flatten slightly before wrapping in plastic and placing in the fridge. Refrigerate the pastry for 30 minutes.

Roll out the pastry thinly on a floured board then line a rectangular tart tin with the dough. Ease the dough into the flutes and trim the edges before returning the tart tin to the fridge while you prepare the filling. You won’t use all the pastry but it freezes well so just wrap any remaining pastry in plastic wrap and store in the freezer.

For the hazelnut and almond praline, preheat the oven to 170°C, conventional. Place the nuts on a baking tray and toast them for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Line a baking tray with baking paper and set it aside. In a small stainless-steel saucepan, heat the caster sugar and water over a low–medium heat, stirring occasionally using a heatproof spoon or spatula, until it has turned a deep shade of amber. Add in the nuts and stir to coat. Carefully tip the praline onto the baking tray, spread it out, and allow to cool completely. Once cool, break the praline into pieces and process the pieces in a small food processor until it forms a fine meal. Increase the oven temperature to 190°C, conventional.

Frangipane
Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla together until pale and fluffy. Mix in the egg followed by the flour, salt, the hazelnut praline and the rum. This should form a soft batter. You can also do this step in the food processor.

To assemble the tart, remove the tart shell from the fridge. Cover the base of the tart with the frangipane filling. Smooth the top with a knife. Place the figs on top, cut side up, then sprinkle the figs with the sugar. Place the tart on a baking tray to catch any spills before placing in the preheated 190°C, conventional oven. Bake for 50 minutes – 1 hours or until the filling is set and the pastry nicely browned. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.

When cold, glaze the top of the tart with some thinned, warmed apricot jam if desired. Unmould and cut into slices to serve.

I enjoyed my slice with a dollop of cream then the next day I took the tart into work. Despite the absence of the fig jam, tt disappeared quickly, which is always a good sign.

See you all next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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apricot and cream cheese galette

18 Feb 2024

In 2022, I made a yeasted apricot cake and although I didn't love the texture I found the apricot and cream cheese topping a winner. I wrote at the time that it would make a fabulous filling for a galette. I planned to make it last year but time ran away with me, so here it is in 2024.

Although it's stone fruit season here, apricots are always in short supply and usually quite expensive. Last week I found some not too expensive apricots in the fruit shop but when I brought them home, I'd not bought anywhere near enough to make the galette. I did however have a bag of apricot quarters in the freezer from last season so I pulled out the bag and set to work. I also found a batch of almond shortcrust pastry, so rather than making a batch of flaky pastry, I went with what I had. Next time I'd make the flaky pastry because the almond shortcrust pastry is a very short pastry making crimping impossible.

So I used pastry that wasn't ideal for the job and year old frozen apricots, so it all could have gone pear shaped, but the end result was absolutely delicious. As I wasn't sure the galette would work out, I only took a few photos.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a large galette which should yield 10-12 slices. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Apricot and cream cheese galette - makes 10-12 slices
Pastry
¼ cup icing sugar
¼ cup almond meal
175g plain flour
Pinch salt
110 g (4 oz) cold unsalted butter, diced
1 egg, lightly beaten

Cream Cheese Filling
125g cream cheese at room temperature
1½ tbs caster sugar
1-2 tbs yoghurt or cream
½ tsp vanilla

Apricot Filling
8 large or 16 small apricots, pitted and quartered
1½ tbs caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated lemon rind
1 tbs raw sugar

Glaze
1-2 tbs apricot jam, warmed

Pastry
To make the pastry, combine all the dry ingredients in a food processor, and whiz for a few seconds until well combined and free of lumps. Add the cold butter and whiz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add a little of the egg and whiz until a soft dough just starts to form around the blade. Remove the dough from the food processor and gather the pastry into a ball; flatten slightly before wrapping in plastic and placing in the fridge. Don’t discard any leftover egg as you’ll use this to egg wash the pastry.

Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C, conventional. Have a pizza tray handy as you’ll use one on which to bake the galette. Roll the dough out thinly (3-4mm) on a piece of baking paper to make a circle about the size of the pizza tray then place the pastry lined baking paper onto the pizza tray. Centre an 8-9 inch cake tin in the middle of the pastry and press lightly to make an imprint in the pastry.

Mix the cream cheese with the sugar, yoghurt or cream and vanilla then spread in a thin layer within the template on the pastry. Decoratively arrange the apricot slices over the cream cheese. In a small bowl combine the sugar with the lemon rind. Sprinkle the sugar mix over the fruit then gently fold the pastry over the apricots using the baking paper to help you. Brush the edges of the folded over pastry with the egg wash before sprinkling with the raw sugar.

Place the galette on the bottom shelf of the oven and bake for 15 minutes, then place on the centre rack of the oven and bake for a further 25-35 minutes or until the galette is beautifully golden on top and the crust is crispy. When cooked, take the galette out of the oven and transfer it to a cooling rack. Let the galette cool a little before glazing the fruit with the apricot jam. Serve as is or topped with yoghurt, creme fraiche or ice cream.

This is best served the day it's baked as the pastry softens when stored. The apricot filling was still quite tart, just how I like it, but if that's not for you then add another tablespoon or so of sugar to the apricots.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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passionfruit custard scrolls

11 Feb 2024

Some recipes take longer than others to perfect. I first made a batch of passionfruit custard scrolls around 3 years ago and they were a disaster. I used custard as the filling, which then leaked all over the kitchen bench as I tried to roll up the dough. What was I thinking? I knew I needed to rethink my technique and decided to make a regular scroll and to fill the scroll with custard just before baking.

When I searched online I found that custard filled scrolls made this way are popular in Norway, so I knew it was doable. The recipe I've come up with is a bit of a patchwork quilt of a recipe. I used my favourite cinnamon bun dough from Sarah Kieffer filled with lemon flavoured butter and sugar; the custard filling comes from sugar salt magic and the passionfruit icing from Stephanie Alexander.

Here's the recipe for you which makes 8 scrolls. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Passionfruit custard scrolls - makes 8
Dough
1 tsp yeast
125 mls milk, lukewarm
30g honey
1 room temperature egg

1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups (300g) plain flour
½ tsp salt
75g room temperature unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Custard

¾ cup full cream milk
1½ tbs caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract
1 slightly heaped tbs cornflour
1 egg yolk

Filling
100g caster sugar
4 tsp grated lemon rind
Pinch salt
80g room temperature butter
1 tbs almond meal

To finish
2 tbs melted butter or cream

Passionfruit Icing
1 cup icing sugar, sifted

pinch salt

50g unsalted butter

2 passionfruit

Dough
Grease a large bowl and set to one side. Combine the yeast, milk and honey in a large liquid measuring cup and rest for 5 minutes or until foamy then stir in the egg and the vanilla.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix the flour and salt and stir on low to combine. Add the egg mixture and mix on low to combine. With the mixer on low, add the butter, one piece at a time. When all the butter has been added (about 8 minutes) increase the speed to medium and beat the butter into the dough, until all the little butter pieces are incorporated, 1 minute. Transfer the dough to the prepared bowl. The dough will be very sticky and you will need a spatula to scrape the dough into the bowl.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for 30 minutes. Place your fingers or a spatula underneath the dough and gently pull the dough up and fold it back over itself. Turn the bowl and repeat this folding again. Continue 6 to 8 more times, until all the dough has been folded over on itself. Re-cover the bowl with plastic and let rise for 30 minutes. Repeat this series of folding 3 more times, for a rise time of 2 hours and a total of 4 foldings. Tightly cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or up to 72 hours.

Custard
Pour ½ cup of milk into a heavy based saucepan. Add the sugar then heat on low-medium heat until steaming, stirring regularly to dissolve the sugar. Remove from heat. (I did this step in the microwave.)

In a bowl whisk together the remaining ¼ cup milk, egg yolk and cornflour until smooth and fully combined. While whisking, very slowly pour the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture in a slow but steady stream. Once everything is combined, return the mix to the saucepan.

Heat over medium heat, stirring with a whisk constantly, until it gets very thick and no longer settles into itself when you move it around. This will happen quite quickly after about 5 minutes so it’s important to keep gently whisking increasing intensity as it gets very thick. At this stage add the vanilla. Swap to a silicone spatula and pass the custard through a strainer into a clean bowl, then press plastic wrap to the surface and allow to cool to room temperature. Place in the fridge until needed. (I made the custard in a plastic measuring jug in the microwave and it only took 2 minutes on medium high, stirring every 30 seconds. The custard came out lovely and smooth so I didn't need to sieve the mixture.)

Filling
Combine the sugar, lemon zest and a pinch of salt in a small bowl then using your fingers rub the lemon zest into the sugar. Add the remaining ingredients and mix with a spoon until you have a smooth paste.

To assemble
Flour a work surface and knead the dough 10 to 12 times to activate the gluten. Shape the dough into a ball, cover the top lightly with flour, and cover with a tea towel and let come to room temperature. Line a tray with baking paper and set to one side.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to form an 8 x 12-inch rectangle. Spread the filling evenly out onto the dough then roll up firmly from the long edge. Using a very sharp knife or pastry wheel, cut the dough to form 8 rolls. Set the rolls on baking trays covered with baking paper, about 5 cm apart. Cover with a cloth and leave the rolls to rise in a warm place until they have doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 200°C, conventional. When the buns have risen, make a deep indentation in the centre of the buns with your fingers. Loosen the custard by stirring vigorously with a spoon to remove any lumps that might have formed. Fill the buns with a tablespoon of the custard filling then brush each roll with some melted butter or cream. Bake the rolls for 20 minutes on the centre rack or until the rolls are golden brown, rotating the pan halfway through. Allow to rest for 5-10 minutes before making the passionfruit icing.

Icing
Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, adding a pinch of salt. Melt the butter, then add it to the icing sugar followed by the passionfruit pulp. If the icing is looking a little too thick you can thin it out with some lemon juice or boiling water. Place the bowl over hot water, then beat the icing for 1-2 minutes until shiny. Generously drizzle the icing over each bun.

These are best served on the day they're made but can be frozen and defrosted.

I don't do Valentine's Day but food has always been my love language and these passionfruit custard scrolls are a perfect way to show your love.

SLIDER