Apple Frangipani Tart

Andrew's sister and family from Melbourne are in Sydney for a visit. I made this tart for 12 people for the dinner which we had tonite at his parent's place. I researched a few recipes for frangipani filling, including that of Guillame Brahimi's, Nick Nairn's and Allison Thompson's. The shortcrust pastry is essentially adapted from Maggie Beer's pastry recipe which I love, it has a lovely crumbly melt in the mouth texture, simple to make. I have adapted all these recipes essentially reducing sugar, and substituting some butter and fat content (for eg extra egg yolks) with yoghurt. The tart was well liked and I am very happy about it. The frangipani texture was nice and moist without being overwhelmingly buttery rich as is sold in most cafes.

Ingredients - 12p
Shortcrust Pastry
250g flour
150g butter
125g sour cream (about 1/2 cup)
A pinch of salt
Frangipani Filling
225g of almond meal
150g butter
4 eggs
25g flour
1/2 cup of vanilla bean yoghurt
110g castor sugar
1 tsp of seasalt
2 tbsp of contreau
Apple topping
2 pink lady apples, sliced thinly
30g castor sugar
2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp of ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 200 deg (fan force)

Pastry
Put the flour and butter and 1/2 of the sour cream into a food processor.
Pulse until light breadcrumb texture.
Add remaining sour cream and pulse till mixture comes together in few clumps (you will know it is ready, when it starts to come off the sides of the processor).
Lay a large sheet of cling film on clean table.
Pour the mixture onto the cling film, and lightly knead to form a rectangle. Dont overwork the dough if you want a light crumbly texture pastry.
Wrap the mixture and rest in fridge for 20 minutes.
Once rested, rub some flour onto large rolling pin and kneading surface, and roll pastry in one direction, about 2mm thick.
Pastry should be large enough to fill tart dish and overflowing on sides by at least 1 cm extra, to allow for shrinkage.
Using the rolling pin, lift the pastry, and work into tart dish.
Using a fork, prick all over the top of the pastry ( this tiny holes helps to prevent "bubbles" forming as the pastry is being baked).
Cover the top of pastry with baking paper, and fill top of baking paper with either baking beads or rice. (to stop it from rising).
Bake for 10-12 minutes.
Take out of oven, remove baking beads/rice and baking paper. Bake for another 5 minutes. (till slightly golden).
Set aside.
Reduce oven temperature to 170deg.

Frangipani filing
Cut butter into squares and place into a hot bowl (place in toaster oven at say 120deg for 10 minutes). The heat will melt the butter gently. Leave to cool.
Mix almond meal, flour, sea salt and 30g of the sugar in a large mixing bowl.
Whisk eggs till creamy and very pale yellow, adding in remaining sugar, slowly and progressively.
Add butter, yoghurt, contreau and then finally egg mixture into flour mixture, and fold till combined.
Spread the mixture evenly onto pastry.

Apples
Peel the apples.
Cut the apples in halve and soak in salted water (to prevent from browning/oxidation)
Thinly sliced the apples.
Dip apples into sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon mix.
Lay apples, slightly overlapping each other, on top of frangipani mixture. Press the apples down into the mixture, without submerging them.

Cut a long thin strip of aluminium foil and cover the sides of the pastry, to prevent it from burning.

Bake at 170 for 40 minutes. Then turn off heat, leave in oven for 5 minutes.

Sprinkle cinnamon powder all over top of apples while semi warm.

Leave to rest at least 30 minutes, preferably 1 hour, before slicing and serving.

Its delicious on its own, but can also be served with cream or vanilla ice-cream.

Note:
In Maggie Beer's pastry recipe, she would use 200g butter, you will have a very rich buttery pastry. I find 150g is good enough for a nice crumbly pastry.

Bon Appetite!