Christmas means summer to us here in Australia, and in perfect accord with the hot holiday weather is the abundance of fresh summer fruit that accompanies it: mangoes, pineapples and papaya, cherries and raspberries, grapes and guavas, peaches and nectarines, and many more exotic fruits too.
In the past we’ve opted for a traditional finish to Christmas dinner – Gluten-Free Plum Pudding with Best-Ever Brandy Sauce – but this year we decided to take advantage of those fresh summer fruits, and with a tart in mind, we found it hard to go past a combination of luscious white peaches and raspberries.
That’s not to say you need to follow our lead. Almost any fruit, fresh or poached, will work well with the tart’s rich vanilla filling.
Just make sure, if you’re using poached fruit, that you drain it very well.
Add a scattering of Christmas shapes on top and you have the season on a plate.
Rosie
WHITE PEACH, RASPBERRY AND VANILLA TART
Serves 10
Best served on the day of baking
Gluten-free Shortcrust Pastry
1 28cm shortcrust pastry base, blind baked, see below
Christmas shaped pastry biscuits, see below
Filling
3 small, white peaches, peeled, stoned and cut into 8 pieces each
250 gm raspberries
6 egg yolks
70 gm caster sugar
½ vanilla pod, seeds only, scraped
200 ml pure cream
Pure icing sugar for dusting
Whipped cream for serving
Pre-heat oven to 200°C.
Place the peach slices evenly over the base of the blind baked tart case. Place the raspberries, hole side down, into the gaps in between the peach slices until the base is covered.
Whisk egg yolks and sugar together until thick and pale. Fold in the vanilla seeds and cream.
Gently pour over the fruit in the tart case. Don’t overfill.
Place in the oven and cook for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 150°C and cook a further 20 minutes or until set. Transfer to a cooling rack.
When the tart is completely cool, dust the Christmas shaped pastry biscuits with pure icing sugar and arrange over the top of the tart.
Serve with whipped cream.
Pastry
250 gm Revenge Gluten-free Almond Plain Flour Mix (see below)
85 gm caster sugar
65 gm unsalted butter, cold, cubed
1 whole egg
1 pinch salt
Place dry ingredients into a food processor and process for a couple of seconds to combine.
Add cold butter cubes and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add egg and process until the pastry comes together. You may need to add some iced water but only a teaspoon at a time.
Place pastry onto a sheet of plastic wrap and pat into a disc about 1cm thick, wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. The pastry will keep in the fridge for at least 1 week.
Preheat oven to 160° C.
Remove pastry from the fridge and knead until smooth and pliable. Roll out between 2 pieces of paper to around 3mm thickness. Reserving any pastry offcuts.
Line a 28cm loose bottom flan tin with the pastry and return to the fridge until quite firm. Remove from the fridge and blind bake (see below).
Christmas Pastry Biscuits
Roll out the pastry offcuts and using any Christmas cutter/s you fancy, cut out shapes to decorate the tart. Place on baking paper on a baking tray and bake for around 7 minutes or until lightly golden.
To blind bake:
Preheat oven to 160°C.
Line the chilled pastry-lined tin with foil, gently pressing well into the corners. Fill with baking weights, pushing them up the sides of the pastry shell (raw rice, dried beans or purchased pastry weights all work equally well). Place in preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and carefully remove the foil and baking weights. Return the tart shell to the oven for a further 7 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool on rack.
The cooked pastry case will keep, wrapped in plastic wrap for 3-4 days.
REVENGE GLUTEN-FREE ALMOND PLAIN FLOUR MIX
280 gm almond meal
210 gm besan flour
280 gm fine white rice flour
175 gm corn flour
Whip a batch and store in the fridge.