I promised a recipe to use the cranberry jam in last week.
Events have conspired against me.
Firstly, I couldn’t find my copy of the book that contained the recipe for the tart. I sent an emergency tweet and the lovely Rosanne from Like Mam Used to Bake and Bionic Laura came to my aid sending me the recipe. I later remembered that I didn’t in fact own the book, I had just borrowed it from the library last year and renewed it for about three months around Christmas. I am definitely buying it. Speaking of books, Rosanne’s is lovely, buy it.
So, the lovely ladies sent me the recipe. I made the jam and had it ready and waiting. Then my cooker made a LOUD noise the day I was going to bake it. A bang. Cookers making bang noises a few days before Christmas in a house that baking happens in is not ideal. But it refocussed me. Santa will have to do with shop bought mince pies, there’s no pressure to make fancy desserts. Twitter came to my aid again and local tweeters (thanks Martin and Donna) put me in contact with a very helpful domestic appliance repairman who arrived today and has a part on order to arrive tomorrow (yes, Christmas Eve). Our cooking the turkey will happen, it will be a Christmas twitter miracle. (OK miracle is stretching it).
Then I remembered that I had taken photos on my phone when I made it last year, so here is the recipe with last year’s photos (tiny I know) and when I make it after Christmas I’ll hopefully update the photos.
If you have a working oven make it, you won’t regret it 🙂 The cranberry jam is tart and is offset by the sweet and zingy clementine flavoured icing. It tastes like Christmas.
Cranberry Bakewell Tart
(Nigella Lawson – Feast)
Pastry base: Nigella makes a lovely base with almonds in it. I used frozen shortcrust pastry and I recommend that you do the same, in the interests of time and mess.
125g butter
125g caster sugar
125g ground almonds
3 eggs
zest and juice of one clementine
250g instant ROYAL icing (not icing sugar)
300g cranberry jam
Gold sprinkles or stars for decoration
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Melt the butter (I did it in the microwave) and leave to cool.
Beat together the sugar, eggs and clementine zest, then slowly stir in the ground almonds.
Follow the instructions on the shortcrust pastry pack and roll it out to fit a deep tart dish with a loose base.
(26cm Nigella says). (If you don’t have one you could use what I call a “quiche dish” of about that size, but you’ll have to serve straight from it instead of putting the tart on a pretty plate). Lightly grease the dish with butter or margarine.
Put the pastry in the dish, prick with a fork, then spread all the cranberry jam all over it.
Next pour in the almond mixture (it looks like vegetable soup I think) making sure to cover the jam.
Then bake in the oven for about 45 mins. Don’t worry about it looking puffy, Nigella assures us that it’ll come good, and it does. When it’s out of the oven leave it to cool on a wire rack and when it’s cool then take it out of the dish by removing the base then the sides.
Make up the instant royal icing using clementine juice and adding any additional water you might need (follow the pack instructions for quantities). Then cover the bakewell with LOTS of icing and decorate with gold things. Enjoy!
