Bakewell Tart

I have wanted to make a proper Bakewell tart for years ever since visiting Bakewell and tasting one from a bakery there.  Before this I had always believed them to be the sickly sweet confections from Mr Kipling which consist almost entirely of icing and I am sure that many others hold the same belief as I did.  I finally decided to make one this week because I discovered that, having made previous plans, I am going to miss out on my yearly trip to the Peak District where my family keeps a caravan and therefore miss out on a possibility of going to Bakewell again any time soon.  I thus decided that I would make my own tart just to ensure that I would at least not be missing out on the culinary delights of the trip.



 Ingredients:

• 500g pack of sweet shortcrust pastry
• 175g butter
• 175g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 175g ground almonds
• 3 tablespoons raspberry jam
• a sprinkling of flaked almonds
• icing sugar to dust

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Roll out the pastry to about half a centimetre in thickness and place it into a 20cm tart tin (this can be quite difficult as sweet pastry likes to break into pieces, don't worry if this happens, just press it back together again in the tin)
3. Place a piece of baking parchment in the case and fill with baking beans - rice or dried beans work just as well if you don't have any.  Then blind bake the pastry case in the oven for about 15 minutes.
4. Take the parchment and beans out of the tin and bake for another 5-10 minutes or until golden brown
5. Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl then beat in the eggs.
6. Fold in the ground almonds
7. Spread the raspberry jam evenly over the cooled pastry case
8. Take the almond mixture and spoon it gently over the jam, if you tip it all out in one go it will squish out the jam so that it won't be evenly spread.
9. Dust the tart with icing sugar and sprinkle over the flaked almonds
10. Put back into the oven for about 30 minutes or until golden brown and an inserted skewer comes out clean.

I decided to use ready made pastry for this Bakewell tart just to make it easier for myself but if you are feeling enthusiastic and want to make it entirely from scratch then just look up a recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry and good on you.  If you have never had a real Bakewell tart before then the outcome may surprise you a little bit, it is incredibly moist, almondy and sweet - though not in the Mr Kipling way.  I was very happy with the outcome of my tart, as was everybody else who tried a piece and thought that it tasted exactly like the ones I have eaten in Bakewell. Success.