You can use any fruit you like: apples, figs, apricots, pears… and the fruit can be either fresh or preserved. Here I’ve used a peach puree for the base and put plums on top. The nutty-wheat gives the pastry a wonderful texture. You can serve the tart with clotted cream, crème anglaise, custard or even fat-free yoghurt.
Nutty-wheat peach and plum tart
Ingredients
- PASTRY
- 200g nutty-wheat flour
- 70g brown sugar
- 100g butter, cold and cubed
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- vanilla paste, to taste
- FILLING
- 50ml butter
- 45ml (3 tbsp) brown sugar
- 50ml water
- 1 x 410g tin peaches, drained and cut into chunks
- 15ml (1 tbsp) ground cinnamon
- 8 – 10 ripe plums, halved (or any other fruit in season)
- 100g castor sugar
- icing sugar, to serve
Instructions
For the pastry, place the flour and sugar in a bowl and rub the butter in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add the eggs and vanilla and mix to form a stiff dough. Bring together into a ball, wrap in plastic and leave to rest for 1 hour.
To make the filling, place 25ml of the butter in a non-stick frying pan with the brown sugar and the water and bring to the boil. Stir until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture becomes syrupy.
Add the peaches to the syrup and continue to cook for 20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200°C and lightly grease a 20cm springform cake tin.
Add the cinnamon to the peaches, mash into a purée and remove from the heat.
Roll out the pastry and carefully line the tin, allowing the pastry to hang over the edges, then carefully remove the excess pastry so that you have neat edges.
Spread the peach purée evenly over the base of the pastry.
Arrange the plum halves on top of the purée and sprinkle with the castor sugar.
Fold the edges of the pastry over to form a border. Dot the plums with the remaining butter and bake for about 40 minutes. Keep an eye on the tart and if the plums start to burn, cover loosely with foil. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with icing sugar. Serve hot with fresh cream or ice cream if desired.
Nicky Gibbs is the executive chef at The Westcliff Hotel in Johannesburg. Call 011-481-6000 for bookings or visit www.westcliff.co.za.
