Treacle Tart recipe

Treacle Tart 

We didn't manage to eat the last loaf of bread I baked quickly enough so a third of it went stale. Rather than waste the bread, I tried to think about how we might use up and remembered that I had previously baked a treacle tart using breadcrumbs. We've brought a couple of large tins of Golden Syrup away with us because we like a little in our morning porridge so I had all the ingredients I needed.

Ingredients
4 oz plain white flour
2 oz butter
Cold water

4 large tbsp golden syrup
12 tbsp breadcrumbs
Squeeze of lemon juice

The first three ingredients are to make the pastry shell although you could use bought pastry if you prefer. I made enough for an eight inch diameter pie dish.

Rub the butter into the flour as lightly as you can until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Slowly add cold water, tbsp by tbsp, stirring it in until you have a soft dough. If your dough gets too sticky, you might need to dust it with more flour. Try to handle it as little as possible or your pastry will be hard instead of flaky and crisp!

Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate it for 30 minutes.

Grease a pie tin and put the oven on to preheat to 180c.

Roll out the pastry to about the thickness of a pound coin. Line your pie dish with pastry, trimming off any excess. Prick the pastry base several times with a fork.

Treacle Tart 

Put the golden syrup into a saucepan over a low heat. When it thins, stir in the breadcrumbs. Mix well so all the breadcrumbs are soaked with syrup. They change colour as they do so. Stir in a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice too.

I wasn't sure exactly how much treacle filling I would need so I added a tbsp of syrup and 3 of breadcrumbs to the pan at a time, building up the quantity until it looked enough to fill the pastry shell.

Pour the syrupy breadcrumbs into your pastry shell and place the tart on a baking tray in the preheated oven. The baking tray is in case the tart boils over while cooking. I didn't want golden syrup going everywhere!

Bake at 180c for 25-30 minutes or until the tart filling is bubbling and the pastry is golden. Remove from the oven and set aside for five minutes to give the filling a chance to firm up a little before serving.

You can eat Treacle Tart warm or cold. We had ours warm with a dollop of coconut cream which was delicious. You can also serve it with creme fraiche, cream or ice cream.

The best curd tart in Yorkshire

We dusted off our bicycles today, Dave for the first time since Hope and

The best curd tart in Yorkshire 

me for the first time since Cawston. Norfolk already seems months ago even though it is only really four and a half weeks! Our nearest shopping town of Stokesley is a couple of miles away along mostly deserted country lanes that to experienced cyclists would be flat and to us have just enough incline that we had quite a sense of achievement by the time we got home with our heavy rucksacks.

There are several cycle hoops by an elegant floral incarnation in the centre of town. Stokesley has lots of pretty flower displays that I think are the work of SPIOTA. Our first stop was Age UK whose '3 for 99p' sign by outside book boxes proved irresistible! The charity shops here have a good quality of stock and haven't overwhelmed the town as there are also lots of small independent gift and homeware shops and a couple of clothing boutiques. We saw the historic Pack Horse Bridge which apparently has been in existence since at least the early 1600s. There is a parish record of its repair in 1632. We also enjoyed strolling the elegant Georgian and Regency streets. Many of the parking areas are cobbled and I thought it all felt more Georgette Heyer than James Herriot!

Pack Horse Bridge, Stokesley 

We failed to find a new hand blender in Boyes as our one finally blended itself to pieces while making a carrot and potato soup for lunch, but I did take the opportunity to buy the local specialty of a Curd Tart from a shop that was awarded the Best In Yorkshire, Thomas The Baker. I was expecting something along the lines of custard tart, misleading myself with the assumption of lemon curd. Instead, the tart has more the crumbly consistency of a bakewell with a sweet cheese flavour instead of almond. My verdict is an excellent choice to accompany a good cuppa, but not the most exciting cake ever!

Flower displays in Stokesley 

Blackberry bakewell tarts recipe

I walked along the Cuckoo Trail into Hailsham this morning and, along the way, saw a couple of women picking blackberries which reminded me that I had not yet gotten around to posting this recipe. I found it originally on the +BBC Good Food website and baked the little tarts pictured for when our friends Andy and Barbara came round for dinner. They went down so well that the plate was cleared within a few minutes! Dave and I had 'tested' a few straight from the oven earlier in the afternoon - purely to make sure they were up to standard you understand? I think they actually taste almondier when cold than when hot.

Ingredients (made 18 tarts) Apologies for the mixed measurements - I always make pastry in imperial!

For the pastry:
8oz plain flour
5oz butter
3-4 tbsp cold water

For the filling:
100g butter
100g caster sugar
1 large egg
100g ground almonds
1 tbsp plain flour
1 tbsp almond liqueur (optional)
Blackberries

Start by making the pastry. Chop the butter into cubes and rub in into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the water slowly and mix it in until you have a soft-but-not-sticky dough. Chill the dough in the fridge while you make the frangipane filling.

Preheat the oven to 200c / 180c fan / gas mark 6.

Put the chopped butter, caster sugar, egg, almonds and plain flour into a large mixing bowl. If using the almond liqueur, add it now too. (Dave had a bottle of +DISARONNO so I 'borrowed' some!) Beat all the ingredients together until combined and fluffy. Don't overmix though.

Roll out the pastry into a thin layer and use a 8-9cm pastry cutter to get circles. (The pastry in the phot was a bit too thick.) Grease a bun tin and line each of the indentations with a pastry circle. Fill each pastry case with a good tsp of frangipane and push a blackberry into the centre. I intended to use the blackberries from our garden, but there weren't enough so we got a punnet from +Waitrose instead. They were huge.

Bake the tarts for about 15 mins and try not to serve them ALL immediately!