This weekend’s Great British Bakeoff test was Mary Berry’s Bakewell Tart. This was CootieGirl’s pick and I think we were both excited to try this one.
The Recipe:
We used the recipe straight from the GBBO website (linked above) but we had to make some modifications along the way since we are in the US, not England. I’ve listed the full recipe, but added notes where our ingredients differed)
Ingredients
For the jam
200g/7 oz raspberries
250g/9 oz jam sugar
For the sweet shortcrust pastry
225g/8 oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
150g/5½ oz butter, chilled
25g/1 oz icing sugar
1 large free-range egg, beaten
For the frangipane filling
150g/5½ oz butter, softened
150g/5½ oz caster sugar
150g/5½ oz ground almonds
1 large free-range egg, beaten
1 tsp almond extract
For the icing
300g/10½ oz icing sugar
1 tsp almond extract
pink food colouring gel
Instructions
- For the jam, put the raspberries in a small, deep-sided saucepan and crush them using a masher. Add the sugar and bring to the boil over a low heat until the sugar has melted. Increase the heat and boil for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and carefully pour into a shallow container. Leave to cool and set.
- For the pastry, measure the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter using your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the icing sugar. Add the egg and 2 tablespoons cold water, mixing to form soft dough.
- Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface to the thickness of a pound coin. Line a 23cm/9in fluted flan tin and transfer to the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 400F/200C/180C Fan/Gas 6.
- Line the pastry case with non-stick baking paper and fill with baking beans or uncooked rice. Bake blind for 15 minutes, then remove the beans and paper and cook for a further 5 minutes to dry out the base. Set aside to cool a little before adding the filling.
- For the filling, spread the base of the pastry case with 4 tablespoons of raspberry jam.
- Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the ground almonds, egg and almond extract and mix together. Spoon the mixture into the pastry case and smooth the surface using a palette knife.
- Reduce the oven temperature to 350F/180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 and bake for 25–35 minutes, until golden-brown and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin.
- For the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Stir in the almond extract and about 3 tablespoons cold water to make a smooth, fairly thick icing. Place 3 tablespoons of the icing in a separate bowl and add a little pink food colouring gel to make a raspberry coloured icing. Spoon the pink icing into a small piping bag fitted with a small plain nozzle.
- When the tart has cooled completely, spoon the white icing on top and spread to form a smooth surface. Pipe parallel lines of pink icing over the white icing, then drag a cocktail stick through the lines (at a 90 degree angle to the lines) to create a feathered effect. Leave to set, then serve in slices.
Our Changes:
This time around we had caster sugar at our disposal because I managed to find some at a different grocery store than the one I checked last week. For those in NC/SC – Publix does not carry it, but Harris Teeter does. Keep in mind the back is VERY small – maybe 2 cups in total – making it very expensive sugar to purchase compared to regular granulated sugar. But buying it helped me confirm that we did not grind the sugar down nearly enough last week when we made the Schichttorte.
Also, we did not make our own jam. I could not find jam sugar (which is sugar that comes with pectin in it already), so after a brief debate about finding an actual jam-making recipe versus just buying a jar of jam, we opted to just buy a jar of jam. Because of this, we opted to use strawberry jam since CG is not a fan of raspberries.
Our Progress:
First up was the piece I was most concerned about: making the pastry. I had lamented a couple days ago that I’m not a fan of touching my food with my hands. I don’t know where that ick factor started for me, but I’ve certainly been that way throughout my adulthood. Nonetheless, after thoroughly washing my hands, I dug in and crumbed the butter into the flour. It actually wasn’t that bad, and not as messy as I envisioned. Like last week, CG and I each made our own bake, and again like last week, CG did not let me take pictures of her efforts, so I only got pics of mine.
Let me just say that I ended up loving the pastry dough we ended up with. It was soft and smooth when rolled out and yet you could see the chunks of butter in it. Yum. Since CG made tartlets versus a large tart, she ended up with a lot of leftover dough which I plan to use tonight. Growing up my mom used to use leftover pie dough to make these awesome cinnamon twist cookies. Tonight I’m going to use our leftover dough to make those cookies. While this isn’t a pie dough, I think it’ll be a nice flaky crust cookie nonetheless.
After rolling out the dough (we laughed when we saw the instructions said to roll it to the thickness of a pound coin (uh…sure)), CG used a large cutter to make her circles for the 4 inch tartlet pans that I bought off Amazon last week. I pulled out a ceramic full-size tart pan for mine.
After its time in the fridge, we lined our pans with parchment paper and put in our baking beads for the blind bake. It’s called a blind bake for obvious reasons – you can’t see the crust as it is baking. You have to go on faith that you’ve cooked it enough since the beads and parchment cover it completely.
For the next few steps I forgot to get pictures. After the blind bake, you coat the bottom of the tart crust with a layer of jam. Here is where I failed – I forgot to take photos. So I’ll just have to tell you that after the blind bake we layered in the jam. However, the instructions said to put 4 tablespoons in my full-size tart and upon watching the episode back, I should have doubled or even tripled that amount. 4 tablespoons was not NEARLY enough. My other mistake was putting in too much of the frangipane filling over the jam. I should have reduced my amount by about a cup of mixture. The result of using too much is that as it baked, the frangipane rose ABOVE my crust, which made it so that there was no way my frosting glaze would sit inside the target like the original Mary Berry tart in the featured image at the top of this post.
Out of the oven the top completely cracked, and that left bottom third was sitting at least half an inch above the pastry shell (and then as it cooled it completely collapsed and sat well below the other part of the frangipane).
After that was fully cooled, it was time to make the glaze, which was pure confectioner’s sugar and water and not much else. CG poured it on her tartlets first, and then I made a batch for mine. It was just thick enough that as I spread it out, it grabbed onto a loose piece of frangipane, which aggravated me because it had been spreading so nicely until that moment Now the top of my tart looked like it had a giant scab I was trying to hide under a thick layer of makeup.
We attempted on one of CG’s tartlets to do the feathering, but the icing solidified VERY quickly and we found it impossible to do. So we just made a criss-cross pattern instead:
It was time for the taste test! My full-size tart was for my office, so we cut into one of CG’s tartlets. Y’all – while it was VERY heavily almond-flavored, Denis and I both thought it was delicious. CG hated it and declared it one of the worst things she ever tasted (she hates almonds, so why should she have expected it NOT to taste like almonds?). CootieBoy refused to even try, although he did briefly hover a piece near his mouth before chickening out. But I liked CG’s so much that I ended up eating a tart later that night.
As for mine, I brought it into work and was disappointed when I cut into it – the frangipane was very loose, and clearly needed to be baked much longer. That was disheartening considering how dark it got in the oven – to the point of appearing like another minute more would cause it to be overdone. With one slice out it started to spread out into the pan – very sad to see.
The one thing that did not disappoint? That crust! It was perfection. And I’m happy to report that my tart had NO SOGGY BOTTOM. The bottom of my target was a perfect dark golden brown and crunchy. I was pretty chuffed about that. WOO HOO!!!
Our Final Opinion and Comparison with the Show:
I think with practice this could be a winner for sure. I’d probably figure out how to make it LESS almondy – is there a frangipane that can be made with half almonds half something a bit more neutral? I would also swap out the glaze for my grandmother’s glaze recipe – it’s less cloyingly sweet by far compared to the Mary Berry version.
Like last week, after our at-home taste test we put on the episode (Season 4, Episode 5, “Pastry”) and saw where we made mistakes. The main one was the application of the frangipane – those whose tarts looks fabulous piped it on versus spreading it on with a pastry knife. But other than that, we did pretty well, all things considered.
CG took a tart to school for her friend to try, and upon finishing it apparently asked CG to bring another one tomorrow. So her tartlets were definitely better than my full-size tart. I’d say that’s a win!
Here is the complete list of all Great British Bake Off technical challenges, which will be updated each time we bake something!
