A Band-Aid for Your Baking
In our book, doing summer right means lots of rosé and a weekly fruit tart baking session. Frozen dough plus whatever fresh ripe fruit happens to be lying around comes together to make a quick and delicious dessert, perfect for bringing to a picnic, or eating with your hands for breakfast.
As anyone who’s made a fruit tart can tell you, one of the great perils of baking with fruit is that the juices tend to overflow or seep through the crust. Luckily, Martha Holmberg’s Plums edition contains a secret fix to this messy problem: frangipane.
This nut-based cream is a pastry-lover’s best friend, acting like a rain jacket for your tart crust while adding a delicate nutty depth. In Plums, Martha uses an almond frangipane as the base of plum tartlets with brown sugar. Since falling in love with that dish, we’ve been experimenting like crazy: tahini frangipane paired with apples (thanks Andrea Albin), hazelnut frangipane with cherries, and, this week, pistachio frangipane with pluots (a hybrid fruit the crosses plums with apricots). We hope you enjoy!
Pluot-Pistachio Tart
MAKES 1 13-BY-9-INCH TART
¾ cup shelled, roasted and salted pistachios
½ cup confectioners’ sugar
½ stick unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon orange-flower water
1 egg
4 ripe pluots, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 sheet frozen puff pastry
Preheat the oven to 425°.
In a food processor, pulse the pistachios until they’re finely ground. Add the confectioners’ sugar, butter, flour, vanilla extract, and orange-flower water and pulse until a coarse meal forms. Add the egg and process until creamy. Set aside.
Add the pluots, 1 tablespoon sugar and lemon juice to a mixing bowl and toss to coat. Roll out the puff pastry on a floured surface to a 13-by-9-inch rectangle and transfer it to a rimmed baking sheet of the same size. Spread a layer of the frangipane over the puff pastry, then arrange the fruit slices on top.
Transfer to the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Sprinkle the tart with the remaining tablespoon of sugar, then lower the heat to 350° and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Let cool slightly before cutting into slices and serving.