I’m going out to dinner tonight and offered to bring dessert. This one is one I have been playing around with since the restaurant, it has gone through more metamorphoses than one can count. I think it started its life as a simple Pear and Almond. This is just its latest manifestation.
It mainly owes its existance to three things I had in the cupboard, well one in the cupboard, one in the fridge and one in the shed.
In the shed we still have loads of Joe Moore’s excellent small red eating apples.
In the cupboard I have some ground Hazelnuts which I brought back from France and which are delicious when used in place of ground almonds.
In the fridge is a large bowl of my own mince meat made from the recipe here.
Christmas Hazelnut Pithiviers
(For an 8 ins. tart tin, six generous slices)
Pastry;
175g (6 oz.) Flour
90g (3 oz.) Butter
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1Tablespoon Water
1 Egg Yolk (keep the white)
Filling:
175g (6 oz.) Christmas Mincemeat
110g (4 oz) Butter (preferably unsalted)
110g (4 oz). Caster Sugar
110g (4 oz). Ground Hazelnuts (or Almonds)
2 Eggs
6 Small Eating Apples
60g (2 oz) Pecans
4 tbs. Apple Jelly or Sieved Apricot Jam to Glaze
Pastry
Blend the butter with the flour and sugar(either by rubbing in or in a food processor)and add in the water and the yolk to bind it.
Use this pastry to line an 8ins. tart tin.
Bake this blind until golden, painting with the egg white for the last few minutes to seal.
Filling
Spoon and spread evenly the mincemeat on the tart base.
Peel the apples, Halve then and scoop out the cores with a sharp little knife (or a corer should you have one)
Beat the butter with the sugar until light.
Beat in the eggs, the ground hazelnuts.
Pour this mixture onto the mincemeat on the pastry base
Push the apples into this mixture and dot with the halved pecans.
Bake at 160C/325F/Gas 3 for about 1 hour and a quarter or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Melt the jelly and spoon over the top.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
Comments
Petra
on January 2, 2008One of the hardest things I had to do in recent weeks was to hand over my divine smelling and looking recreation of this cake to my neighbours! It was part of a thank-you-gift for minding our cat over the Christmas holidays and apparently demolished by them plus extended family while still warm. They had never eaten anything like it they said – and by the sound of it this was a good thing.
Today I planned to finally make one for ourselves but was stopped dead by the sudden and awfully disappointing realization that one of the main ingredients was your very own mince mixture of which I had received exactly the amount needed for the first cake. But far from being deterred I thing I’m going to be brave (or reckless?) and come up with some individual version of mincemeat featuring a good handful or two of dangerously mature brandy-soaked raisins left over from the Stollen I DIDN’T bake for Christmas.
To be continued….
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