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.

Apple Pie, but Better

It’s apple time. Yep, I know it has been apple time for a month or so but that last month has been a little nuts.

Still, I feel that I should be making apple pie at this time of year. Only thing is, I am not an apple pie lover. Or, a cooked apple of any kind lover. Cooked apples to me are just, well, just okay, nothing to jump up and down about and, until now, I didn’t think anything to really blog about.

My, oh my, how my opinion of cooked apples has changed after this discovery. It is not a revolutionary idea but it is perfectly sweet in all the right places. They are chewy where they should be. They are crisp and biscuity on the bottom. They are nutty and crunchy on the top. And, they are moist and spicy and sweet right in the middle.

They are half tart, half crumble. The leftovers don’t make a crostata or a free-form tart, but a pizza, as I was matter-of-factly informed by Big Daughter. In fact, it would be worth making a whole batch of these in the form of pizza for a more substantial dessert.

There is a little finickiness, but once you get going it is all just fine and fun and the finished product, especially warm with a little vanilla ice cream or crème fraiche, is pretty frickin’ good.

I used Gordon Ramsay’s pâte sucrée recipe. Not because I love it but because I had made too much a while ago, had it in my freezer and needed to use it up before we go seasonless in California. Turns out, it is perfect for this. It is strong enough to hold up to the filling and the crumble top and some minor manhandling getting the little tarts out of the tin and, conveniently enough, perfectly crisp enough to balance the soft of the apples and the tender crunch of the crumble.

The apples I used, while I bought them as Macintosh, didn’t taste like Macintosh. We think, maybe, that they had been growing with some Gravenstein and got a little mixed up. Regardless of all that, they cooked beautifully in this. You could use any cooking apple. 

Apple Crumble Tarts (makes 24 or 6-8 pizzas for a little less finickiness)

1/2 recipe Gordon’s Pâte Sucrée (see below)

Crumble

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup spelt flour (I like using spelt because it makes the crumble a little crunchier I find)

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1/2 cup softened butter

Filling

6 apples 

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

11/2 tablespoon cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Grated nutmeg

Butter 24 muffin tins. Preheat oven to 350º.

Make crumble by rubbing all the crumble ingredients together until it makes pea-sized crumbs.

Roll out pastry and using a biscuit cutter or a lightly floured glass, cut out 24 circles. I used a 78mm biscuit cutter for this. I recommend rolling the pastry out in batches to avoid re-rolling and the toughness this can cause. Line the muffin tins with the pastry circles. They won’t come up the entire side, they should come up about 1 1/2 centimetres.

Make the filling by peeling, and grating the apples into a large bowl. Quickly mix with the lemon juice to avoid discolouration. Mix the sugar spices and cornstarch together and mix in to the apples.

Use the filling to fill the tarts being careful to avoid dripping on the sides and filling them just level with the top of the pastry.

Crumble the crumble over the tops.

Put in the oven and bake for around 20 minutes or until the crumble is cooked and the bottoms are golden brown.

Remove from oven. Cool a few minutes in tin. Using a small knife, gently remove them from the tin and continue to cool on a wire rack. 

These will keep for a couple of days in an airtight container. 

To make the pizzas, roll out the pastry, place on a parchment lined baking sheet, top with filling, roll edges up slightly, crumble the crumble on top and bake until golden brown.

Gordon Ramsay’s Pâte Sucrée

250 grams softened butter

180 grams caster sugar (you can substitute granulated, just don’t tell Gordon I told you so)

3-4 vanilla pods (which is a lot, so I understand if you cut it back)

2 large eggs, beaten

500 grams plain flour (use all purpose and you should be fine)

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl until smooth and creamy, but not fluffy. Slit open the vanilla pods and scrape out the seeds with the tip of a knife, adding them to the creamed mixture.

With the mixer on low speed, gradually incorporate the beaten eggs. Stop the machine once or twice and scrape down the sides.

Sift the flour and salt together. With the mixer on its lowest speed, add the flour in 3 or 4 stages. As soon as the mixture comes together as a crumbly dough, stop the machine.

Gather the dough together and turn onto a lightly floured surface. Briefly knead it with your hands until smooth - this should only take a minute or two. Avoid over-working the pastry.

Divide into 3 or 4 batches and wrap in cling film. Leave to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before rolling out. Or freeze it for later.

Before you roll it out, give it a light kneading to prevent it from cracking as you roll. Dust your work surface very lightly with flour and, using light, even strokes, roll out the pastry.