Apple Frangipane Tart

Haven't been baking for some time and realized that almond powder was about to expire. Hence I surf the web and come across the recipe for Apple Frangipane Tart.

Do note that the recipe is taken from Joy of Baking's Apple Frangipane Tart and I have decided to incorporate the Almond Short Dough (taken from Tartlette’s Strawberry Lime Tartelettes) to compare the two types of pastry shells.


For short notes and photos on the almond short dough, please refer to our previous post.

- Short notes on Pate Brisee -
According to Joy of Baking, this is a French short crust pastry made from a mixture of flour, sugar, salt, unsalted butter, and ice water and the video posted by Stephanie is extremely useful. Through the video, I confidently used the food processor to make the dough and everything goes well.


Being an amateur baker, as what Stephanie has mentioned, it is not easy to roll the dough into a nice big round and after making it thin, it was quite a challenge to line it on the tart rings so from the picture, you can see there are many fingerprints and patches of dough.

Recipe (For six 8-cm tarts)
Pie Crust: (half of Joy of Baking's original recipe)
Ingredients needed:
87.5 gm plain flour
7 gm granulated white sugar
56.5 gm salted butter
15 ml ice water

Steps
1. Cut the butter into cubes and chill it in the freezer
2. Place flour and sugar into the food processor. Pulse to combine
3. Add butter into the food processor. Pulse (in quick and multiple times) to combine until coarse meal is obtained
4. Add ice water to the coarse meal. Pulse to achieve crumbs that holds together when pinched
5. Transfer the mixture to a plastic wrap, gather it into a tight ball and refrigerate for an hour or until firm
6. Roll the pastry and cut out six 3-inch rounds to form the base of the tart crust
7. Press in some dough at the side of the tart rings, patting the dough with fingertips
8. Put the lined tart rings into the refrigerator to relax the gluten

P.S. As mentioned, I didn't manage to get a nice big round as what the video has shown and I would prefer to make it into small tarts to reduce the baking time.

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Frangipane (Almond Cream): (this amount is sufficient to make twelve 8-cm tarts as two type of dough were used in this attempt)
40 gm salted butter
12 gm plain flour
50 gm granulated white sugar
50 gm almond powder
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract



Steps
1. Combine flour, almond powder, sugar in a mixing bowl
2. Rub in butter
3. Mix in egg and vanilla extract to get a paste

***

1. Slice the apples and add some lemon juice to prevent oxidation of apples
2. Mix the sliced apples with cinnamon
3. Remove chilled pastry (in tart rings) from the refrigerator and spread the frangipane onto the crust
4. Arrange sliced apples and sprinkle some icing sugar before baking
5. Bake it for 20 minutes at 190°C

Note: The recipe for the almond short dough can be found here. As mentioned, the tart shells were blind baked for 10 minutes at 175°C. After assembling the tart with frangipane and sliced apples, the tarts were baked for 20 minutes at 175°C.

- Ending Note –
Both type of tart pastry taste just as good with apples but for a lighter taste, I would prefer the pie crust over the almond short dough. The effect of the buttery crust makes it akin to eating a shortbread that is lightly sweetened by the frangipane and tangy apples (due to the use of Grammy Smith Green Apples and the addition of lemon juice). For sweeter tooth, the almond short dough is still an all time favorite and naturally with more sugar and almond powder, this has a richer taste.