Fruit and Almond Joy: Plum-Frangipane Tart

When I posted a picture of Miro Uskokovic's Almond-and-Plum Snack Cake on Instagram, one of the comments came from someone trying to decide between two plum recipes in Joanne Chang's Pastry Love: her Plum-Frangipane Tart and Plum Upside-Down Cake. It had been ages since I had made a tart, so I decided to give the tart recipe a try.

 

The crust is Pâte Sucrée and I made it a day in advance. I beat cool butter with sugar and salt until pale and light; added flour; and incorporated an egg yolk. I formed the dough into a disc, wrapped it in plastic, and stuck it in the fridge. The next day, I rolled out the dough, used it to line a 10-inch tart pan, docked the dough, and the chilled the shaped crust before baking. You blind bake the crust without weights and the crust lost a little height but didn't shrink much in diameter. However, the crust became quite dark while it was in the oven, so much so that I considered starting over. But I decided to press on.

 

I filled the baked crust with frangipane, which I made by mixing butter, sugar, almond flour, eggs, flour, vanilla, and salt (I also added a little almond extract because I love almonds and I have never regretted adding almond extract to an almond dessert). Then I arranged quartered Italian plums on top and baked the filled tart until the plums were soft and the frangipane was golden brown. I brushed thinned and warmed apricot jam over the plums and entire surface of the tart shortly after taking it out of the oven.

As you can see in the photo above, before baking, the plums were basically just sitting on top of the frangipane (which was spreadable, but stiff). But the plums sank in as the tart baked, so in the end you could only see slivers of fruit poking out through the frangipane (see photo below). Because the crust was already dark from the blind bake, I used a crust shield during the entire second bake. But as you can see, the crust was extremely dark. It wasn't burned, but it definitely wasn't ideal. In the future, I would reduce the amount of time for the crust blind bake.

Despite my extra well done crust (which at least released from the tart pan without a problem), this tart was terrific. The frangipane was dense and very almond-y, and the the generous amount of jammy tart-sweet plums was a delicious counterpart. The flavor of the crust wasn't optimal and it was a little fragile from being overbaked, but that would be easy enough to remedy in the future. I love frangipane paired with pretty much any type fruit, and this elegant tart is no exception.

Recipe: "Plum-Frangipane Tart" from Pastry Love by Joanne Chang.