Black Forest Bakewell Tart #GBBOBloggers2016 #GBBO Week 5: Pastry

31 Comments

Black Forest Bakewell Tart

Welcome to week 5 of the #GBBOBloggers2016 and having watched tonights episode of the Great British Bake Off you will know that it was all about pastry.

This weeks themes were:

Signature Bake – Danish Pastries
Technical Bake – Bakewell Tart
Showstopper – Filo Pastry Amuse Bouche 

So even though I adore Danish Pastries, I felt that the pastry making element of it was too much of a faff and to calorific for my waistline, I chose instead to make a black forest inspired Bakewell tart. Now, as much as I have enjoyed Bakewell tarts over the years, in particular those from a brand which makes exceedingly good ones (!), I have never actually made one. Therefore, with it being a category on tonights show and with Mary’s recipe in my GBBO series 7 recipe book, it was like fate. Well, not really, but I thought it was time to pop my bakewell tart cherry so to speak!

And speaking of cherries, I adapted Mary’s version slightly so I used a cherry jam instead of raspberry and I made a chocolate pastry for my tart, and I decorated my icing with grated chocolate. I found this special plain pastry flour in my local Tesco at the weekend, so thought, nay hoped, that this would help me to achieve the perfect pastry for my tart. 

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A couple of week ago I was sent a Ninja Complete Kitchen to assist me with my bakes while the #GBBOBloggers2016 took place, and this has been my first reason to attempt making pastry in it. I have to say it whips up a ball of pastry dough in next to no time, maybe 40 seconds in total which is super fast, isn’t it?
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So at this point I had made some perfect chocolate pastry, and I rolled it out, placed inside my greased loose bottomed tart tin, and I chilled it and then blind baked it for the time stated in Mary’s recipe. I filed it with the jam and my frangipane mixture, and baked it for the time that Mary suggested in her recipe. So far, so good. It even came out of the oven looking lovely – and I should have taken a photo of it right there and then, while it was intact.

However, I had a typical Mummy Mishaps moment, possibly I removed my tart a little too early from the tin, or maybe my pastry was too crumbly, because as I went to place my tart from its tin to my cake plate – about 1/3 of it fell off! Aaaaaaagh!!!! It was like being on the GBBO show – I felt like poor Louise when her gingerbread church collapsed!!!!

Well, luckily, I was still able to cut off some nice slices to photograph , I just cannot show a photo of a complete black forest inspired bakewell tart!!! But I can show you a single slice serving in as many different ways as possible – so cue lots of angles of the intact slice (there is still more left that could be cut but did not see the point in showing photos of 6-8 identical slices!)

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The Black Forest flavours worked really well, and the chocolate pastry was really nice, light and crumbly and buttery and mmmm mmm! Just a shame I lifted the tart out too soon, to or maybe it was because my pastry was too crumbly. Who knows, but I do know that it tastes really nice and is a tart I would make again. 

Here is my recipe for a Black Forest Bakewell Tart:

Black Forest Bakewell Tart #GBBOBloggers2016 #GBBO Week 5: Pastry
 
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My take on a classic bakewell tart
Author:
Serves: 10
Ingredients
  • *For The Pastry*
  • 200g plain flour
  • 25g good quality cocoa powder
  • 150g cold butter, cut into cubes
  • 10g icing sugar
  • 15g ground almonds
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • *For The Fragipane*
  • 150g butter, room temperature
  • 125g caster sugar
  • 150g ground almonds
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1 tsp almond essence
  • *Jam*
  • Cherry jam - about ½ a jar
  • *For The Icing*
  • 300g icing sugar
  • 1 tsp Kirsch
  • water
  • *Decoration*
  • 25g chocolate shavings
Instructions
  1. Grease and dust a large loose bottomed tart tin - mine was 23cm
  2. If you are lucky to have a food processor type machine, then place all of the ingredients into its bowl and whizz until the mixture comes away from the side and starts to form a ball.
  3. If not then you can make pastry by hand by rubbing the flour and butter together until they resemble fine breadcrumbs.Stir in the coca powder, ground almonds and icing sugar with a fork. Make a well in the middle and add the beaten egg, take a knife and cut through mixture until it leaves the sides and forms a ball. You might need a little cold water, if the mixture is too dry (mine did not need this).
  4. Once you have your ball of dough, roll it out onto a lightly floured surface with a lightly flour dusted rolling pin into a large circle.
  5. carefully drape into the prepared tin, taking care not to break off any excess pastry, prick the base with a fork and chill in the fridge for 30 mins
  6. Pre heat the oven to 200oC / 180oC, and place some baking parchment and baking beads (I used dried pasta) on top of your chilled tart and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Then reduce the oven to 180C /160C and remove the baking paper and bake for 5 more minutes
  7. While your tart is baking, you can make a start on your frangipane:
  8. *Frangipane*
  9. Place the butter and sugar in a bowl and cream together for about 5 minutes, until soft and pale.
  10. add the almonds , essence and egg and mix well to make a paste
  11. *Assembling*
  12. Once you tart has rested for about 10 minutes after its blind bake time in the oven, spread jam across the base, and then cover that with your among mixture and spread over as smoothly as you can
  13. Return to then oven for about 25-35 minutes until golden on top and a knife comes out of the filling clean
  14. Leave to cool completely and then carefully remove from the tin and place on a wire rack
  15. *icing*
  16. mix the icing sugar with the kirsch and a little water to make a fairly thick paste, but one that can be spread easily
  17. Once your tart is cold, spread the icing sugar paste over it and smooth it over
  18. sprinkle with the chocolate shavings
  19. Hopefully, yours will have come out of its tin in tact!

 

Mummy Mishaps

If you would like to bake along with me for the new series of the Great British Bake Off, then the rules are here and you can grab my badge on my homepage and on the rules page. I look forward to seeing what you come up with and remember that at the end of the bake off, I will be holding my prize draw which has been kindly sponsored by Tesco (thank you!) who are also sponsoring some of the bloggers who link up with some vouchers to purchase ingredients. In the finals an independent judge will choose his or hers 3 favourite bakes from the final bake along (week 10).



31 Comments

  2. I think it looks just amazing! I love chocolate pastry and even though i have done a bakewell specifically for this week, it has reminded me of some chocolate pastry i blogged about back in June so might link that up too – is that allowed? No it doesn’t properly fit into the categories – i might just mention it in my blogpost instead. x

    Reply

  4. Snap! I’ve gone chocolate & cherry too!! Great minds think alike Jenny 🙂 Although they have the same flavour combo both of our tarts look different to each other – i love your idea of finishing it off with greated chocolate! Yum! It looks great Jenny, I’m so glad you were able to enjoy some of it even though you had a ‘mishap’ moment (it really does sound like the sort of thing I’d do too!)
    Angela x

    Reply

  8. Oh no sorry to hear about your tart falling apart. I nearly did the same when I remove the pastry case from the oven as the loose bottom came out of the other part in my hands – doh!! This looks delicious though. Somehow I am really getting the sense that you like Black Forest flavours! 😉

    Reply

  11. It sounds and looks so lovely – I would love to try this bake. Im sorry that a little fell off but these things happen – especially to us bloggers as we are under pressure to photograph in good light and before anyone digs into it!

    Reply

  13. What a great idea for a Bakewell tart it looks seriously scrummy. Who cares if a broke a bit so long as it didnt all end up on the floor. Moments like that I just serve it cut up and keep quiet:)

    Reply

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