Almond and Jam Tart

Yet another posting about my in-laws stay! I never make pudding when it is just the two of us, but when we have people to stay, I always like to make the effort and my in-laws loved this tart! I made this for pudding on Saturday night.

For our main we had roast free range chicken with an Israeli cous cous salad (Israeli cous cous mixed with fresh herbs, chopped preserved lemon and chopped almonds) and an asparagus (yes, it’s that time of year again!!), baby spinach, blue cheese and pecan salad. My in-laws are in their 60s and so are of the meat and three veg generation – I always like to make them something that I don’t think that they would usually have at home – hence the introduction to Israeli cous cous.

Pudding was of the more traditional variety – an almond and jam tart. I adapted a recipe which was published in Donna Hay magazine about a year ago. The tart is a short crust base (you could use store bought, but I used some sweet shortcrust pastry which I had in the freezer left over from a Dorie Greenspan recipe) with an almond frangipane filling, topped with jam and then more pastry. I used my pastry wheel to cut strips of pastry for the topping which looked quite nice. I made the tart in a rectangular loose bottom tart tin.

The jam I used was some home made blueberry and apple jam which I made last year, but you could use any – raspberry would be nice as would plum. The tart was delicious warm served with whipped cream, but was equally nice the next day for morning tea.

Almond and Jam Tart (adapted from Donna Hay magazine)

Shortcrust pastry to line the tart tin
1 c ground almonds
¼ c sugar
½ c flour
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
75g melted butter
1 c jam of your choice
beaten egg yolk and raw sugar for sprinkling

· Roll out ¾ pastry to line a 15x30cm tart tin
· Combine ground almonds, sugar, flour, egg, vanilla and melted butter and spread over tart base.
· Bake at 180c for 15 minutes or until golden
· Spread jam over almond mixture, roll out rest of pastry and cut into strips or shapes and place over top of jam
Paint beaten egg yolk over the pastry and sprinkle with raw sugar