Raspberry not-quite-Bakewell tart

I don’t like writing about baking and sweet things as much as I do savoury. In part because recipes have to be that bit more accurate in order to reproduce my results, and also because I much prefer cooking, and coming up for ideas for, savoury dishes. Having said that, I still enjoy do enjoy it and in fact, it seems like when I post about cakes and desserts, I get more likes and views to the blog. At the moment, I’m trying to find a balance between cooking what I want to cook and doing things that will hopefully attract people to my writing. So for now, that means a steady supply of cakes and biscuits, as well as writing the more informative articles and savoury dishes that I enjoy.

Given that I’m in Derbyshire for the summer, some sort of riff on a Bakewell tart was probably inevitable. For a lack of raspberry jam and instead, a small amount of frozen raspberries (the plants aren’t yielding enough fruit to eat them fresh in any quantity), I swirled the whole and broken raspberries through the almond layer instead before baking. The end result was a little more raspberry flavoured than almond flavoured, but good enough all the same.   I wouldn’t say it was an improvement on the classic, but was a nice way of using up a few odd berries and getting a bit more practice with pastry! Cherries or blackcurrants would also be good in this.

Ingredients

• A 23cm/8in blind-baked pastry case
• 75g ground almonds
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 25g self-raising flour (Or omit and use all almonds, though you’ll have a denser filling)
• A handful of fresh or fully defrosted raspberries
• Icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 160°C (140°C for a fan oven). Beat together the almonds, sugar and eggs until smooth. Once the oven is up to temperature, fold the flour into the mix until just incorporated, followed by the raspberries – don’t worry if they break up a little, you’ll just end up with a slightly pink filling! Straight away, pour the batter into the pastry shell and bake for 25-35 minutes, or until set and golden brown on top (I’m still getting to grips with a new oven, so timings might be a little out). Leave to cool before dusting with icing sugar to serve. Serves 8.