Pistachio and blackcurrant frangipane tart
An easy and delectable dessert that's perfect for Easter. Plus, I offer lots of variations to choose from according to the season and the flavours you love
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Our family plays a game when we eat out called What Mum Will Choose. My husband and the kids know that when I love a dish or an ingredient, I love it hard, so they reckon they can predict what I will pick from a restaurant menu every time.
Scallops and oysters have my name on them, as does game, pork belly, lamb shoulder, turbot, skate wing, offal of any description, any form of bitter leaf salad, asparagus, whipped cods roe, rhubarb (any manifestation) and …. frangipane tart. Sometimes, if a menu has all my loves on it, ordering can be a very long process.
A combination of butter, sugar, eggs and a generous quantity of ground almonds - pistachios are classic, too - and you have frangipane, one of the most delicious tart fillings on planet earth.
The nuts make it joyfully damp and dense in a sticky almost chewy way, and provide a welcome hint of savoury to the sweetness. The denseness of the filling depends on how you combine the ingredients together and whether you add flour. More on this in the variations below the recipe. Scraped into into a shortcrust pastry case - ideally one slicked with jam or similar, and maybe topped with fruit and/nuts - you have pudding nirvana.
As I write this I’m travelling home after lunch at Quo Vadis, where, having enjoyed salsify fritters with parmesan, bitter leaf salad (natch), guinea fowl (natch) served with turnip tops and caper dressing, I’d had an ‘elegant sufficiency’, as my mother would say. But I still ordered pudding because frangipane tart with blackcurrants and cream was on the menu. A no brainer.
It was an insanely good version, as you would expect from the kitchen of
Jeremy Lee: a dense and sticky pistachio frangipane encased in buttery
crumbly shortcrust pastry, draped in blackcurrant sauce and topped with a
blob of cream. It was so good, in fact, that my dining companion - who professed not to have a sweet tooth and therefore didn’t order dessert - ate half of mine. Don’t you hate that?
At home, frangipane tarts have become my secret weapon dessert, and I recommend they become yours too. They’re virtually foolproof, quick (except for the hour or so
in the oven, which doesn’t count because you can sit and read a book and sip a cocktail or a cup of tea while this is happening) and you can make it taste slightly different every time.
No-one will judge you if you use shop bought shortcrust pastry to line the tart tin instead of making it from scratch. However, if you opt to make it yourself, I suggest doing it the night before you plan to eat it, leaving it in the fridge to rest until morning. Then, much of the work will already be done on the day.
The heavenly flavours in the recipe below are inspired by the one I demolished at Quo Vadis. It’s bliss.