GBBO Week 6 - Piña Colada Frangipane Tart

This week on the Great British Bake Off, it was all about pastry. Sadly again I couldn't try to properly reproduce the technical challenge - the flouna - a cheese filled pastry/bread - as I couldn't get hold of the cypriot spices required :( Looked tasty though! The showstoppers were vol-au-vents, which I did try and will try to post about soon. However, it was the first challenge, the signature, that took my fancy.

The signature challenge were frangipane tarts, sweet shortcrust pastry tarts filled with an almond paste concoction and topped with fruit. A lot of the baker’s recipes did intrigue me - I’ll definitely be trying out Paul’s mulled pear Christmas tart this December! However, one of the bakers who didn’t do so well in this challenge was Mat. His tart was based on a piña colada – pineapple, rum and coconut. These are three of my all time favourite flavours, so I decided to have my own go at this.

The result had tonnes of coconut flavour in the frangipane, a sweet pineapple topping with an undercurrent of coconut rum. Due to the juiciness of the pineapple, this pastry can end up a little soggy, so make sure to blind bake the pastry (baking it without any filling in).

Makes 1 x 20cm tart.

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

60g cold butter, cut into cubes
125g plain flour
50g icing sugar
1 egg, beaten

For the frangipane:

85g butter, softened
85g light muscovado sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp coconut rum
45g ground almonds
40g dessicated coconut
1 tbsp plain flour
1 medium pineapple, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks (you could use canned, but I find it doesn’t have as much flavour as fresh)
4 tbsp apricot jam

Method:

1. Make the pastry. Measure the butter, flour and icing sugar into a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter using your fingertips – this breaks up the butter, and will turn to a breadcrumb consistency.

2. Once the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, add the egg and bring the dough together into a ball. Do not overwork the pastry – as soon as it is a ball, cover in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.

3. Once chilled, take the pastry out of the fridge. Place between two sheets of clingfilm, and roll out to a circle about 24cm in diameter (this will cover the base and the sides of a 20cm tart tin). Carefully place in your tin – if there are any holes, don’t worry, just fill it in with leftover pastry. Place back in the fridge for 20 minutes.

4. Preheat your oven to 180c/160c fan/ gas mark 4. Place greaseproof paper onto your dough, and fill with baking beans (or uncooked rice). Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the beans/paper from your tart and bake the pastry for a further 5 minutes.

5. Whilst the tart is blind baking, make your frangipane. In a mixing bowl cream together the butter and the sugar until it is light and fluffy (you can do this stage with an electric mixer if wanted).

6. Add the eggs, rum, ground almonds, desiccated coconut and flour, and fold in. Spoon into the pastry case and level.

7. Top with the pineapple in your preferred pattern – here I tried to do concentric circles.

8. Bake for 25 minutes – the pineapple does bubble a lot, but if the frangipane is not liquid, and firm when lightly pressed, it's cooked. Take out of the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes.

9. Heat the apricot jam and 1 tablespoon of water together in a saucepan or microwave.

10. Spread onto the top of your tart, and try to avoid any big apricot lumps – if you want to be sure there are no lumps, press the heated jam through a sieve first.