This is a sweet little tart. Easy, too. It is a Peach and Plum Frangipane Tart from Hetal Vasavada’s new cookbook, Desi Bakes.
Over the decade that I’ve been writing Blue Cayenne, I’ve posted innumerable recipes for stone fruit dishes. To me, stone fruits are a culinary gift of the gods–sweet with a pleasant bit of tang, juicy, texturally intersting and on and on. There are the bright beautiful colors, too.
Technically, stone fruits are drupes–a fleshy fruit with a hard stony pit. This category of fruits includes all the usual suspects–peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, cherries, mangoes. But there are ever so many more choices in the stone fruit world!
There are hybrids, for example. Consider pluots, apriums and pluerries. In the hybridizing of these fruits, scientists put their thumb on the scale favoring a specific drupe. The pluot, for example, leans toward the plum while the aprium gives the apricot star billing. Then there are the pleurries! What? A pleurry is a cross between a plum and a cherry. It is sometimes advertised as being “sweet like a cherry with the summer fresh plum zing.” Wow!
Some berries are drupes, too. Blackberries and raspberries, for instance, are aggregate drupes, made up as they are of clusters of individual drupes, each one having a tiny pit in its center.
Surprisingly, drupes include olives, dates, coconuts, almonds, and walnuts. Who knew that there was any relationship whatsoever between that beautiful Santa Rosa plum on your plate and the olive in your martini?
How to select your stone fruits at their peak of sweetness? The experts suggest following the scent. That’s right. Sniff the fruit for a sweet scent. Another clue for sweetness, look for wrinkling of the fruit’s skin at the stem.
In addition to today’s recipe for Peach and Plum Frangipane Tart, here are some stone fruit recipes from Blue Cayenne’s archives. Why not truly embrace stone fruit season and dive into the many great recipes that incorporate the fruit?
The Peach and Plum Frangipane Tart recipe being featured today on Blue Cayenne comes from Hetal Vasavada’s new cookbook, Desi Bakes. You can order the book through your local bookstore or on Amazon here.
Here is the recipe for Peach and Plum Frangipane Tart as I prepared it in my kitchen.
Peach and Plum Frangipane Tart
Ingredients
- 1/2 of 10 inch by 15 inch puff pastry sheet
- For the filling:
- 1 -2 large peaches (cut into 1/4 inch slices)
- 2-3 plums (cut into 1/4 inch slices)
- 2 T. apricot jam (warmed)
- 1 T. powdered sugar
- For the frangipane
- 1/2 t. grated lemon zest
- 1/3 C. granulated sugar
- 5 T. unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 1 large egg (slightly beaten)
- 1/2 t. vanilla extract
- 3/4 C. almond flour
- 1 t. ground ginger
- 3/4 t. ground cardamom
- 1/4 t. kosher salt
- 3 T. all-purpose flour
Directions
- Step 1 Defrost the puff pastry. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Cut the sheet in half and reserve the other sheet for another purpose. Gently roll the puff pastry out to a rectangle. Roll the pastry around your rolling pin and place it on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Use a knife to lightly score a one-inch border around the edges of the puff pastry. Using a fork, dock the center portion of the puff pastry to help keep the pastry from puffing up too much during baking. Bake for about 25 minutes to parbake it. Remove from the oven and cool slightly. Once the puff pastry is parbaked, increase the heat in your oven to 400 degrees F. for the next stage in preparing this dessert.
- Step 2 Prepare the frangipane filling. Combine the sugar and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers. Add butter and mix to combine with the sugar. Add egg and vanilla and mix to combine. Add almond flour, ground ginger, ground cardamom, and salt and mix to combine. Add flour and mix to combine.
- Step 3 To assemble the pastry.Using a fork, gently press down on the parbaked puff pastry’s center. Spread the frangipane across the center of the parbaked puff pastry, using an offset spatula for spreading the frangipane. Arrange slices of fruit artfully onto the pastry. Return the assembled pastry to the 400 degree F. oven and bake for another 35 to 40 minutes. Watch your pastry at the end of the baking time. You want it to be a pretty golden brown.
- Step 4 As soon as you take the tart out of the oven, brush it with the apricot jam that you have warmed in the microwave. At the time of serving, dust the tart with powdered sugar.
