This is an English recipe - really easy and I've never known anyone who doesn't love it.
Ingredients
Pastry case
Raspberry jelly
Stick of butter
Sugar
Lemon
3 eggs, beaten
Ground almonds
Bake the pastry case just a little. There's this thing called "baking blind" which means lining the pastry case with parchment, putting something like dried beans to weigh down the parchment, cooking in the oven at about 380 degrees for about 10 minutes, then remove the paper and beans and give it another 5 minutes. Some people brush egg white over the pastry before the second baking. I confess that I don't always bother with any of that. If you're lazy and you skip all the paper/beans stuff, then it's likely that your pastry will bubble up when you cook it. If you can't live with bubbles then do it properly!
Spread the jelly (jam) over the bottom of the lightly cooked pastry case. You want to use enough jelly to hide the bottom of the pastry, but not so deep that it's sickly.
In England, we'd use something called caster sugar. It can be found in America and Canada, but it's not an everyday item and it's really easy to make. Buy regular sugar and put it in a blender for about a minute. Your goal is to have 'fine sugar'. Now that you know what caster sugar is, and how to make it, you might want to keep some in your pantry with a vanilla pod thrown in. Better yet, run a really sharp knife along the vanilla pod and let the seeds fall into the caster sugar.
Still, Bakewell Tart is completely delicious with or without the vanilla. Make some caster sugar (make a lot but you're using about a third of a cup for this recipe). Put it into a bowl and add the half stick of butter, which will ideally be soft. Grate in the lemon zest - don't grate so hard that you include that white stuff under the yellow outer side. Also, this is one time when it's really worth buying an organic lemon, to avoid that plasticy, shiny, chemical coating on non-organic lemons.
Use something fun to 'cream' the butter and the sugar. Any of these will work, but working from left to right, it's much harder on your arm if you choose the left side!
In case your kitchen isn't well-equipped yet, it's really affordable to get the hand whisk, and there are some really good deals for electric whisks. The blender is likely to be something you save up for - but worth it if you're going to be doing much cooking. These blenders are great for making soup, chopping onions, perfecting a pesto ...
So, now you'll have a creamy mix of lemony butter and sugar. Tip in a little of the beaten egg and 'cream' it a little more. Keep adding and creaming the egg until it's all mixed in to make a batter. Now fold in the ground almonds. Tip in a full cup and then most of a second cup. You want to end up with a 'dropping consistency' - that means that if you put some on a wooden spoon and tip it over, the batter will drop off the spoon like a very thick liquid. It shouldn't be solid, like butter. If it is, then add some lemon juice to loosen it.
Smooth the batter over the jam in the pastry case. Level the top with a knife. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 425 degrees for about 15 mins, then lower the heat to about 350 degrees and cook for about 25 minutes more until it's firm to the touch. Sprinkle with flaked almonds, or with sifted powdered sugar. Serve warm or cold - both are delicious.
You might want to play table tennis, too!
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