Author: Jenni

Team Craft Fantastic were very busy this weekend baking and making. We made shortbread with the Star Wars cookie cutters, splitting the dough in half and adding green food colouring to one and cocoa powder to the other.

Geeky shortbread, anyone?

I acquired a nice big bag of greengages this week and decided to put them to good use by making a greengage and almond tart. I can’t remember where I found the recipe, I just typed ‘greengage recipes’ into google and this one popped up and seemed to say “Make me, make me!” – and it seemed rude not to. I’ve added my own handy hints and tips to this.

50g butter
50g ground almonds
25g caster sugar
1 large egg
12/250g ripe greengages
195g/20cm butter pastry case
Knob of butter (you really don’t need much at all.)
2 tbsp flaked almonds

METHOD: Heat the oven to 400F/200C/gas mark 6. Dice the butter into a food processor (or if, like me, you don’t have a food processor, dice the butter into a mixing bowl and allow to reach room temperature before adding the other ingredients and mixing to a paste). Add the almonds, caster sugar and egg. Blitz into a thick paste. Spread the paste in the pastry case. Halve the plums round their middles, winkling out the stone. Plant, cut-side uppermost, in the frangipane with a little space between each one. Melt the butter in a frying pan and quickly toss the flaked almonds to coat evenly with butter. Scatter over the tart. Bake for 25 min, or until the frangipane is firm and swollen, the plums are weeping and the flaked almonds golden. If liked, dust with icing sugar before serving hot, warm or cold. N.B.- if, like me, you are using a pre-bought pastry case, you do need to be careful of the edges. It was a choice between frazzled pastry case or slightly uncooked frangipane- as you can see I opted for the former. I have since learnt from my mum that you can put foil around the edges of the pastry case to prevent this.

It tasted fab. I reckon you could use any type of plum though if you can’t get greengages.