When Mummy Mishaps announced that last month's theme on I Love Cake was toffee or caramel, I had a couple of ideas for my cake but the little minx got in there first! And then yet again, I missed the deadline! However, I thought I'd blog this regardless. I remembered her rather scummy toffee apple cupcakes that she'd made a few months previously and adapted the recipe to make a kind of Bakewell Tart.
Ingredients:
- Condensed milk toffee (you'll need 100g of brown sugar, 100g of butter and a tin of condensed milk)
- one cooking apple
Shortcrust pastry:
- 125g/4oz plain flour
- pinch of salt
- 55g/2oz butter, cubed
- 30-45ml/2-3 tbsp cold water
- 2oz ground almonds
- 1oz caster sugar
Frangipane filling:
- 125g butter
- 125g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 125g ground almonds
- 1tbsp plain flour
- The first stage is to make some toffee. Put the brown sugar and butter into a saucepan and melt. Add the tin of condensed milk and stir while it thickens for 20 minutes. Leave to cool slightly while making everything else.
- Make the shortcrust pastry in the traditional way. I added ground almonds and some caster sugar to in order to sweeten it. Put a layer of baking beans over the base and cook for 10 minutes at 180°C.
- While this is blind-baking in the oven, poach the cooking apples in 1 tablespoon of water, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of sugar for ten minutes until softened, then drain.
- Cream the sugar and butter for the frangipane mix, add the eggs, sift in the flour and ground almonds. Mix thoroughly.
- Put a spoonful of frangipane mix in the base of each tart case, then layer apples on top. Put a dollop of toffee on top of the apples and then another dollop of frangipane over the top again.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180°C until a skewer/knife comes out clean.
- Serve warm with ice-cream or clotted cream.
