Bakewell Tart

From Wrapped in Pastry, Leigh Drew, Aduki Independent Press, 2011.

I do enjoy pies and tarts so when I saw this little book I picked it up. It is for vegan cooking rather than vegetarian, which I prefer, but I thought I would give it a go and see how it worked out. It is a cheaply produced book with a mixture of both sweet and savoury recipes. My first try was only half satisfactory: the case was terrible but the filling very nice.

The pastry for the base was the failure for me. It used margarine instead of butter. I have made pastry before with margarine and it has not worked so I had doubts before I began this one but I did try it to see if this one would be all right. It didn’t work for me. I do believe that the result was due to firstly me rolling the pastry a little too thick but more than that I feel that cooking it in a 160ºC oven was wrong. I always cook my pastry in a much hotter oven. After 20 minutes—the stated time—the case did not look right for me so I turned up the oven to 200ºC. It was of course too late to really make the pastry burst into life.

The filling was very good. I mixed 2 tablespoons water with 2 tablespoons flaxseed meal. This was left to meld while the next process was done. For this I put ½ cup margarine and ½ cup brown sugar in the mixer and gave it a burl to churn it well. Then 1½ cups almond meal was blended in. Now the flaxseed mix went in and one apple grated. The recipe called for apple sauce but I felt that freshly grated apple would do the trick. I now added a tablespoon flour, ½ tablespoon baking powder and a tablespoon lemon juice. (The recipe called for lemon zest.)

Now strawberry jam was spread on the pastry base which had been cooling. The filling was poured in and smoothed over. Flaked almonds were sprinkled over the top and it went into the oven for half an hour.

The filling turned out well and was very tasty. Should I try it again—which I might do—I would use a different pastry recipe, though I suspect that the oven temperature quoted was quite wrong to cook a pastry.

One other detail: I do find it annoying when ingredients are not listed in the order in which they are required for the recipe.

I score the pastry case a zero but give the filling ✔✔✔.