Great frangipane tart (luckily)

[johnstevens77]

A series of (age related?), blunders resulted in the greatest frangipane tart ever consumed at our table.
Firstly, I made up a batch of short crust, (recipe in next post so as to shorten this one).
I don’t often make short crust so was obliged to consult my recipe; however, I really ought to put on my reading glasses!
When it came to clumping it all together with the dough hook, the mix was just too dry, I had no idea why at that stage so added a dash of ice cold water which did the trick although it was still very dry. It proved impossible to roll into my usual large sausage shape before cutting into 220gr discs for the freezer, so I made up balls of dough and flattened them out by hand instead. When finished I looked at the recipe again but this time wearing my glasses and saw that I ought to have used two large eggs instead of one as in my sweet crust recipe! Sweet crust only needs one egg because of the high sugar content).
Anyway, after resting overnight in the fridge I rolled it out, not without difficulty, lined an old well greased 8” loose bottomed fluted tart tin and rested 30mins in the fridge. Meanwhile I turned on the oven to 200°C and put the baking beans in to heat up**. I lined the unbaked tart shell with parchment, added the hot beans and blind baked for 10mins, removed the beans and cooked for another 5 mins and reduced the oven to 180°C. I did this the day before but would usually do it at the same time as making the tart. I spread the base with a thin layer of good raspberry jam and topped it with fresh raspberries from the garden, piping the frangipane mix on top. It was baked for 35 mins, cooled, removed from the tin, dusted with icing sugar and eaten while still warm.
And why was the tart so good? Well we put it down to using short crust instead of the usual sweet crust and to the frangipane mix being piped onto whole raspberries. Also the frangipane was very light, maybe because the kitchen being so cold, I warmed the butter and sugar in the oven for a few seconds before whisking and pouring in the beaten egg.
**I like to bake/part bake my tart shells blind, using hot beans on the very bottom of the oven; we never have soggy bottoms in our house!

john