Monday, January 16, 2012

Bakers Anonymous

jamtarts2

Most people have an addiction to something.
Smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, playing Call of Duty for hours, falling for bad lovers, eating too much chocolate, picking their toenails, watching documentaries, oversleeping, knitting, or jumping out of an aeroplane, each addiction has an unexplainable lure that is terribly hard to resist.

My addiction? Well, apart from sadly spending a disgusting amount of time watching the Kardashians, it is baking. Like all great habits in life, the more I do it the more obsessed I become. And it doesnt help when recipes are incredibly easy and failproof, like Maggie Beer's famous sour cream pastry which I learnt to make when I went to the Barossa last year.
It's probably the best pastry recipe out - crumbly and soft and melt in your mouth and so ridiculously easy to make. Add in a topping of delicious raspberry jam and a buttery almond frangipane mixture and you'll see why I'm addicted to this soothing past time of creating delicious treats out of pure, simple ingredients to be enjoyed in front of trashy reality tv shows.

jamtarts

Sour Cream Pastry
Recipe by Maggie Beer
200g chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes
250g plain flour
125ml sour cream

Place butter and flour in a food processor and whiz up until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Pour in the sour cream and continue to pulse until the mixture forms into a ball. Take pastry out and cover in glad wrap and place in the fridge for at least 20 minutes to rest.

Frangipane Jam Tarts
Recipe by Jamie Oliver
Makes 6 individual tarts
1 egg
100g ground almonds
100g butter
90g golden caster sugar
Zest from 1/2 orange
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 a cup of raspberry jam (any flavour will do)

Make a frangipane mixture by cracking the egg into a mixing bowl with the almonds, butter and golden caster sugar. Mix in the orange zest and add 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.
Mix everything together well until the mixture is creamy and light.
Now to roll out the pastry - grab the dough from the fridge and split into smaller sections (about 8 even portion). Grab each portion and roll out using a rolling pin until about 1/2 a cm thick. Place rolled out pasty into an individual, greased pastry tart tin. Repeat until all 6 pastry tins are lined. You can roll up any left over pastry, wrap up and keep in the freezer for another time when the baking bug bites.
Now spoon a small teaspoon of jam into each pastry base. Top with a heaped teaspoon of frangipane, add another small teaspoon of jam, then finally another heaped teaspoon of frangipane.
Put the tarts in a moderate oven about 180 degrees and cook for about 20 minutes.

4 comments:

  1. i want another one.....pleaseeeee!

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  2. Frick me! I totally missed out on these on Sunday night. Didn't I?! Urggghhy burrrgghhh. They look bloody delicious.

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  3. Yum! I share your addiction to baking, and reading cookbooks!...not to the Kardashians though. I'll have to try this recipe some time..I love frangipane tarts!!!

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  4. it is a burden that i carry with a heavy heart, and bum, deebee!

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