Peach and Almond Tarts

Peachy.

This week I remembered how much I love peaches. Then I remembered how much I love anything that tastes like almonds. And then I remembered how delicious home made rough puff pastry is. 

Ingredients:

For the Rough Puff Pastry:

This makes 500g of pastry, you only really need half this amount for the tarts, but it's always nice to have left overs in the fringe or freezer (just make sure you stack the trimmings rather than scrunch them).

250g very cold butter, cubed

250g plain white flour

125ml iced water

5g salt

For the filling:

100g ground almonds

100g soft butter

1 egg

25g sugar

a few drops of almond extract

3-4 ripe peaches, depending on size, sliced finely in to crescents

a little vanilla sugar for dusting

Method:

For the pastry:

- weigh out all the ingredients. Tip the flour out on to a cool, clean surface and make a well in the centre. Tip the butter in to the centre and start to scrunch the butter in to the flour. Keep doing this until the flour and butter are fairly well mixed. You want to have pretty big lumps of butter throughout the flour.

-Add around half the water and mix it in with your fingers to form a dough. Add enough water that it starts to come together but is not sticky (you probably won't need all of it)

-very gently knead it so it forms a ball. Roll this out so that the length is 3 times the width.

-Now start folding: bring the bottom edge in to the middle of the length, then fold the top down over this (like a business letter)

- turn this folded dough one quarter to the right. Roll again so that it is 3 times longer than it is wide. Fold again in the same way. Make a mark in the dough using two fingertips (to remind you that you have done two folds. Wrap in cling film and leave in the fridge for 20 mins.

-repeat this rolling and folding twice more, mark it with four finger dents and return to the fridge for 20 mins.

Hooray! We have rough puff ready to use. Cut this block in half and save the other half for another recipe.

puffy buttery layers. Om nom nom

For the tarts: 

-heat the over to 200C and line a baking tray with paper

-mix together all the filling ingredients except the peaches.

- roll out the pastry to about 2mm thick. Either using a small saucer as a guide and cutting around it, or using a pastry cutter (10cm diameter) cut out 4 rounds. Place them on the baking sheet.

- add a tablespoon of the almond mixture to each of these discs and spread nearly to the edges.

-arrange the peaches on top in a circular fashion, overlapping the central corners as you go.

- bake for 10 mins. After 10, remove from the oven, sprinkle with the vanilla sugar and turn upside-down (this can be tricky) so the bottom of the pasty can cook and puff up. Cook for a further 10 mins. Turn them back up the right way round and bake for a further 2 mins (if they need extra time).

-And there you have them! Warm, melt in the mouth buttery peachy loveliness.

recipe adapted from Good Food magazine