Roasted Raspberry Meringue Tart or How to Use up all Your Frozen Berries

As you may or may not know, I have a little thing for a certain food and travel magazine. The pictures, the articles, the recipes are all exactly how I want to cook every single day. You may or may not also know that, having spent a winter away, my craftily squirreled away stash of summer fruit is still largely intact. 

Summer fruit is starting to come along here and I have been having a little panic about how to use up what I have. 

I also have been fancying a recipe for a Rhubarb and Raspberry Meringue Tart in a certain food and travel magazine since returning from San Diego to a stack of six issues. This graced the cover and has had Poppy oohing and ahhing over what she calls its marshmallow top since first spotted back in April.

So, while I love this magazine, I have to come to terms, on a monthly basis, with the fact that, depending on how you choose to look at it, I get it six months early or late because of Australia being in the Southern Hemisphere and all. I also have to come to terms with the fact that, upside down seasons aside, certain things are never going to be in season plentifully together here; things like raspberries and rhubarb.

Our tart would be plain raspberries, and I would roast them with some sugar and lemon and hope that it wasn’t a complete mush in the end. It was but it was damn tasty mush and it was really nicely tart so that the italian meringue, or marshmallow top, didn’t make an overly sweet pud. The frangipane makes a delicious little tart all on its own and topped with the berries alone would be a really nice little take on a Bakewell tart but the meringue, the oh-my-god meringue elevates the whole thing way beyond the humble Bakewell.

I used frozen raspberries and made a double recipe (two tarts) so I freed up a lot of freezer space. You can use fresh and it will be less jammy if you treat them gently. You may be able to reduce the ‘roasting’ time as well. If you are using fresh berries, you could skip the cooking altogether and make a little raspberry syrup or coulis, toss the berries with it and pop them on top of the frangipane. I think you would need to eat it pretty quickly in that case as well, not that that should be an issue.

This tastes really and truly delicious and it is so pretty that you almost don’t want to cut it. But do, because you will be happy and happy and happy.

I’ll apologize now because taking lots of process shots seems to have gone the way of sleeping past 6:30 am, showers and not asking a toddler whether they need to use the potty every twelve minutes.

Roasted Raspberry Meringue Tart adapted from Australian Gourmet Traveller

Pastry

180 grams softened butter

40 grams icing sugar

2 egg yolks

250 grams plain flour

Beat butter until pale, add sugar and stir to combine. Add the egg yolks and 1 tablespoon chilled water. Sprinkle flour over and stir to just combine. Knead a few times on a floured surface. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator (+/-1 hour).

Frangipane

75 grams softened butter

80 grams granulated sugar

70 grams almond meal (ground almonds)

1 tablespoon booze (the recipe originally called for brandy, I used Grand Marnier)

2 eggs

50 grams slivered almonds

Beat butter and sugar until creamy and pale. Add the almond meal, booze and eggs. Stir just to combine and then stir through the slivered almonds. Refrigerate to chill (+/- 1 hour).

Roasted Raspberries

4 cups frozen raspberries (still frozen)

1/4 cup sugar (if you love sweet sweets then just bump the sugar up a bit here)

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 400º. On a large baking sheet, arrange berries. Sprinkle with sugar and roast until outer edges start to caramelize. Gently stir or toss berries and return to oven. When the edges start to caramelize again, remove from oven and allow to cool. Strain any extra juices off and save to serve. Gently stir through the lemon zest. Allow to cool.

Roll out the pastry and line a 22 cm tin with a removeable base. I used a springform pan. Trim the edges and prick the bottom with a fork. Rest, in refrigerator, for one hour.

Heat the oven to 350º. Blind bake the tart case (line it with parchment and weigh it down with baking weights or some dried beans) for about 20 minutes, until light golden. remove the weights, or beans, and the parchment and bake for a further 10 minutes or until golden.

Spoon the frangipane into the tart case and bake until it is set and golden, about 15 minutes.

Cool just until firm and remove from tin.

Italian Meringue

175 grams granulated sugar

2 egg whites

Pinch of cream of tartar

In a small saucepan, add 60 ml of water to the sugar and heat gently until all sugar is dissolved. Increase heat and cook until temperature is 121ºc on a candy thermometer, this is pretty much the firm ball stage in the world of candy cookery. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Slowly drizzle the sugar syrup into the egg whites while the mixer is on and beat for 10-12 minutes until cool. The meringue will be glossy and firm.

While the meringue is whipping, spoon the raspberry mixture onto frangipane. Top with the meringue, pipe it if you have the means, otherwise a spoon and some swirls will be just perfect.

Serve drizzled with a little extra syrup if you like.

It's a Hard Life

In the past, you know those very few times I remembered to actually do it, Recipeless Wednesday was a photo and just a photo. While all this travel, as I have discovered, leaves little time for anything other than tea, I thought at least I could take pictures and tell you a bit about it. Luckily, the daughters and I have being very well cared for. Meals and laundry and comfy beds abound.

I could use a little more wi-fi access to the interweb, all available at the cafe down the road but the likelihood of accompishing anything other than a MacBook swimming in spilled hot chocolate is slim. My less optimistic visions of the mayhem involve Tilly jumping across the tables, lattes and cappuccinos spilling every which way as she shouts, 'Mine, mine, mine,' wielding a spoon reaching for the chocolate sprinkles of strangers and other terrified small children.

We started out on a high note, with our very own fashion dos and don'ts on Wills' and Kate's big day. We decided that hats are back unless, of course, they are really just nude coloured fancy Minnie Mouse ears. Not sure anyone could pull that/those off. All this royal telly watching with cups of tea to fuel the six am start.

Then we enjoyed an amazing day here where we, and our cupcake smeared gaggle of cousins, didn't venture past the dining room but, after a quick internet squizz, I am determined to go back for longer than an afternoon. We were treated to a Royal Wedding Tea Party complete with wedding cake and, more importantly, Pimm's. It was all served in idyllic English surrounds on a day straight out of July. After tea and cakes and little cucumber sandwiches delivered to the garden by icing-wired offspring, I almost couldn't bear the thought of returning to bathe and put to bed my children.

Then, there was more tea, and more cake, in the form of Annabel's Marmalade Cake, recipe and more children happily playing together while their mothers determined the best and worst dressed. I will post this in due time. I am starting to worry that this will become a blog about delicious things to eat with a cup of tea and, consequently, I'll need to let my trousers out.

Later that week, we had coffee with Rosie in Appleby. Her and her husband, Andrew, run The Courtyard Gallery. Stephen would have been most impressed with my restraint, Poppy's Deborah Hopson-Wolpe bowl almost got a mate and I could hear my cupboards crying out for Dartington pottery. Rosie makes the cakes for the gallery cafe so we were treated to a walnut cake and Tiffin squares and some other things that my children devoured before I got to try.

The next day we got to Cornwall, after a most stoic, if I may say so, eight hour car journey on my own with the girls. For that day, our gustatory experiences were enjoyed on a path of least resistance basis and somewhat limited by and to motorway service stations and coffee (lots of) with bribes of chocolate and sweets, like they hadn't been eating all that for the last ten days.

Crossing the Tamar, into Poppy's birthplace, as she'll all too readily explain, is a bit of a homecoming. It is our English home. Cornwall has brought us asparagus by the literal bucket load. Said asparagus gets itself drizzled in just shy of a bucket load of melted butter and a generous salt and peppering and calls itself supper. I have absolutely no problem with that.

Poppy has been begging for rhubarb, she has only had it once since we got here, and Eton Mess, that too has also only been had once. She has determined it is better than pavlova, it is essentially smooshed pavlova. Luckily for her, we managed to not get lost, stuck or drive the car into a hedge on some single track Cornish lanes leading to the farm shop where, as their sign four miles back promised, they had not only rhubarb, but fresh strawberries too.

We drove back to the grandparents' as fast as our out of practice Cornish lane navigating would allow and set about the yummiest of English puds and roasting our rhubarb. All the pictures and instructions to come in the first installment of 2011's Rhubarb Trilogy. All this, just as soon as I find some wi-fi.