Wow! Just wow!
What do you get when you combine a shortbread crust, a frangipani custard base and beautiful just-in-season apricots from the farmers’ market? This tender and absolutely stunning tart!
Take my advice and eat this tart just warm from the oven when the warm apricots literally melt in your mouth as they float on top of the smooth almond custard and when the shortbread crust is at its peak of crispness.
(Full disclosure: Only because I want to be absolutely sure I capture in words the essence of the dish, I’m eating one several slices of this tart as I write this blog. It is, after all, what I owe the people who are kind enough to read Blue Cayenne. Never mind my powdered sugar mustache. Dignity flies out the window when you are eating a warm apricot tart. Trust me.)
This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Patricia Wells’ cookbook Patricia Wells at Home in Provence, a cookbook for which she won a James Beard award. Wells was born in the United States (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) but now divides her time between Paris and Provence. Sounds like the good life to me. She has a new highly-regarded cookbook, My Master Recipes. (My Master Recipes by Patricia Wells.)
Here is a link to the original recipe: Patricia Wells’ Verlet’s Apricot Tart. (Maison Verlet is a tea shop on the Rue St. Honore in Paris. It has been serving coffee and sweets (and tea) since the beginning of the 20th Century.)
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Can’t wait to try this and share the cute powdery mustache! It sounds so delicious… ?
Can you imagine I was dumb enough to think all I had to do to get almond flour was to grind almonds….no wonder my tart crust was so hard to cut! ….today I looked at flours in the market and sure enough it was there, by Red Mill….Almond Flour. Now I am going to make the Blueberry Lemon cake. It also uses almond flour, and one of these days I will make that tart with apricots again, and see how it is when I do it right! …xxx funny cook I am!