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Almond & Prune Tart perfumed with Lavender

12 Servings

Mise-en-place:

Tart Crust

• 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 6 ½ T unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
• ½ cup icing sugar
• pinch of salt
• 4 egg yolks
• ¼ vanilla bean, scraped
• zest of one lemon

Almond Cream or frangipan

• 3 oz (90ml) of unsalted butter
• 3 oz (90 g) of ground almonds
• 3 oz (90g) of icing sugar
• 2 T (20ml) of pastry flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 T of almond extract or vanilla
• zest of one orange
• 1 Tbsp culinary lavender (blue rosea or pink)

12 dried prunes, plumped in sweet wine or apple juice.

Equipment:

• Rolling pin
• 9" tart pan
• Food processor or grater
• Stand-up or hand-held mixer
• Scale
• Several stainless-steel bowls
• Spatula
• Small saucepan

Preparing the Pastry
Place the flour, icing sugar, lemon zest and salt into the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and process lightly until the ingredients form a fine crumb. Mix the vanilla seeds into the egg yolks. Add this yolk mixture to the dry ingredients and process this until the ingredients hold together. Bring the dough together gently. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours before using.

Preparing the Almond Cream
Cream the butter in a stand-up mixer until very soft. Combine the ground almonds and icing sugar and add this to the butter. Add the eggs very slowly, beating well after each addition. Stir in the extract, zest, lavender and flour.

Assembling the Tart
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Roll out 8 oz of the pastry, line the tart shell, and chill the shell before baking.

Once the shell is chilled, blind bake the shell for 15 min. Remove the beans from the tart. Let tart cool slightly. While tart is cooling, cut the plumped prunes in half. Spread the almond cream on to the bottom of the tart crust. Place prunes in concentric circles round the tart into the almond cream. Bake tart for approx. 25 min or until a skewer comes out clean from the center of the tart.

Cool tart slightly before eating.