Fruity Delights

Tarte Tartin is a French classic dessert and made with apples, but in the season of golden apricots we had a simple version with these. So often apricots eaten raw are disappointing but cooked all their fruity deliciousness is revealed. While they are in season we try to eat them as often as possible, and also stew them to store in the freezer for colder months. This pudding was a new way to eat them and very easy to do. 4 ounces of sweet shortcrust made in a processor, a pound of fruit and thirty plus minutes in the oven. I ate the leftovers cold with coffee for a special and good for you breakfast - well, the fruit is full of vitamins and the pastry is the morning carbohydrate portion....

And a cake usually made with berries was equally good using our glut of allotment rhubarb, long green and red sticks which need sugar but gave this cake a sharp goodness.

Apricot Tarte Tatin

4 oz sweet shortcrust
1lb apricots
1 oz melted butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar

A round metal or other oven proof dish.

Oven at No 5/190  

1. Make the pastry using 4 oz plain flour and 2 oz butter plus a dessertspoon of sugar and a little milk - a matter of moments in a processor or satisfying to make by hand. It is worth making 8 oz and freezing half for another day, in which case I would use an egg with a dessertspoon of milk to bind it.
2. Pour the melted butter round the dish.
3. Lay the halved and stoned apricots, cut side up, in the dish, packing them tightly.
4. Roll the pastry out to the size of the dish and lay the pastry over the top.tucking it into the edges.
5. Bake for up to 45 minutes or until the pastry is brown and the fruit juices are beginning to bubble around the edge. Cover near the end if it is getting too brown.
6. Carefully turn out onto a plate so that the fruit is on top!

Rhubarb Streusal Cake

200g plain flour

110g ground almonds

110g castor sugar

225g chilled butter

40g flaked almonds

40g pine nuts

A generous pound of garden rhubarb - 5 or 6 sticks cut into short lengths and cooked in advance

Strawberry or raspberry jam - optional

No 4/180

20 cm round tin with a removable base

NB This recipe uses a processor but if you do not have one, good old fingertips will be fine. Rub the fat into the flour for the basic mixture and then use your hands and a palette knife to form the shortbread base.

1. Firstly put your cut up rhubarb onto a shallow oven tin, spreading it out in one even layer. Add a spoonful of sugar and roll it around a little. Put into a heated oven at No 5/6 and cook for 10 minutes or so until the fruit has softened. Drain off any juice and use once it has cooled. 
2. Put the ground almonds, flour, sugar and diced butter into the processor.
3. Mix until it start to look like crumble mixture. 
4. Stop and put half into a bowl. Add both sorts of nuts to this to make a streusal mixture.
5. Continue mixing the rest until it forms a pastry like dough.
6. Press this into the base of your tin, smoothing it with your hands.
7. Spread the fruit over this. Add a few blobs of jam if you like and want extra sweetness.
8. Scatter the streusal mixture on top so that it covers the fruit.
9. Bake for 45 minutes until the top is golden and the juices are beginning to bubble up.
10. Cool before eating as pudding or cake - the base gets firmer as it cools.