Almond tartlets
The author’s favourite. Found in France for about a euro in the early noughties. Twofold ten years later in Paris. Yes it does take time to make them yourself, but here is the way I make them when I’m away for too long and I’m in withdrawal.
3 h preparation, 30’ baking, 30’ finish.Ingredients (for 750 g of amandines)
- 500 g sweet dough
- 300 g frangipane
- raspberry jam
- apricot jam
- rum
Preparation
Roll down the sweet dough, it’s a delicate job. Expect difficulties and a lot of trimmings given the quantity, collect them and compress them together to make more tarlets cases.Working out the dough while cool makes the job easier.
Prepare as many cases as you can, and pre-bake them 15 min at 180 C. You can use ceramic weights or raw beans on top to avoid swelling.
Put the weights away (caution they’re hot!). Paint the case bottoms with a mix of raspberry jam and rum.
Top up each case with fresh frangipane.
Sprinkle with split almonds and put back into the oven for 30 min at 200 C.
Protect from burning with aluminium foil during the second half of the baking time.
Polishing
Melt some apricot jam in a saucepan with a bottom of water. Filter with a sieve if necessary to obtain a lumpless fluid.Paint the top of the amandines with melted jam with a food brush to get this nice glare touch. Put half a glacé cherry on top. Keep cool. Keep refrigerated if you are planning to keep them for two or three days.