Peach and raspberry frangipane tart

I grew up in stonefruit heaven. Each summer, we'd eat peaches and apricots until our little tummies felt like they would burst. I thankfully avoided the right-of-passage: picking fruit over the summer. I saw how utterly ruined my sister was after a day on the fruit blocks and promptly begged the local supermarket for a casual job.


My mum would make apricot straps for an afternoon snack. You might know them better as roll ups, but we seemed to have our own language growing up. Pikelets were drop scones, silly sausages were gunkies and roll ups were straps. Apricot straps were her way of using up the mountains of apricots sweating away in our laundry over the middle of summer.

My theory was the same with this tart. Unfortunately, it only used about 4 peaches - we had two giant boxes of them. Never mind, the end result was pretty spectacular. We devoured this on Christmas day alongside icecream plum pudding. They weren't designed to be eaten together though, no. This was a two course dessert session. Because we hadn't just eaten enough turkey to sink a ship.

For this recipe I decided to get creative and try out iMovie on my new Mac. It was fun with a capital F. Check it out (it's best viewed full screen with surround sound and some popcorn. That reminds me, I should write a recipe for caramel popcorn. Later, Emma, later).


Peach and raspberry frangipane tart from Emma Bennetto on Vimeo.

Shortcrust pastry

150g unsalted butter, softened
1 egg
250g plain flour
pinch salt
pinch sugar
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla paste
1 teaspoon milk

Cream butter in mixer. Clean down the sides of the bowl and add the egg. Mix well on high speed - sometimes egg doesn't incorporate well into creamed butter but it helps to keep cleaning down the sides of the bowl. Turn the speed down to low and add the flour, salt, vanilla and sugar. Mix very briefly - the key to a good pastry is to limit the handling of the flour. Add the milk and mix quickly.

Turn out onto some plastic wrap and shape into a flat round. Again, try to handle the pastry very little. Pop it into the fridge to chill for 20-30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees celsius. Line a baking sheet and place a greased pastry ring on top.

Roll out the pastry between two sheets of baking paper. It helps to roll from the centre of the pastry up, then down from the centre and then rotate 45 degrees. Stop rolling about 1cm from the edge of the pastry. This keeps the pastry vaguely round in shape, and relatively even in thickness. You want to roll it to about 3-5mm thick.

Roll the pastry up around your rolling pin and roll out again over the pastry ring. Working quickly, move the pastry into the ring by tilting up the sides to allow it to fall in. Ensure the pastry is down in the corners of the tin and press lightly to the sides of the ring. Slide your (clean) thumbnail around the top between the ring and the pastry. This ensures the pastry will slide easily from the ring. Use a fork to prick a few holes in the pastry. Chill for 10 minutes.

Place a piece of baking paper over the pastry and fill with baking weights (rice, dried beans etc). Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and take out the baking weights and paper. Bake again for 10 minutes or until golden.

Peach, raspberry and frangipane


150g unsalted butter, softened
115g almond meal
115g icing sugar
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
grated rind of 1/2 an orange
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
35g plain flour
4 peaches
1/2 punnet raspberries

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.

Beat butter in mixer for 3 minutes or until pale.

Sieve together almond meal and icing sugar. This is called tant pour tant, (loosely) translated to half and half in English. Pour this into the creamed butter and mix until the butter has turned pale. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing until all incorporated. Add the orange rind, flour and vanilla and beat until fluffy.

Pour the frangipane mixture into a piping bag and pipe into the pastry shell. Cut the peaches in half and assemble, cut side up, on top of the frangipane. Add the raspberries.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the frangipane is fluffy and peaches golden. Serve warm or cold with cream or icecream.