baking

September is back.

And I find, still, that I miss school. I miss the stuff of it. It’s been too many years since I’ve bought school supplies. No crisp clean notebooks, no colored pencils, no folders, no protractors, no scientific calculators. No Trapper Keepers. There is hardly any Velcro in my life. I miss the smell of crayons and loose leaf, I miss the sound of cutting construction paper and the tactile satisfaction that comes with peeling the dried translucent coating off the top of last year’s bottle of glue.

I miss the feeling that I was about to embark on a new grand adventure and the feeling that this, oh, this would be my year.

Without the thrum of pencils scratching paper, the rustle of syllabi replete with goals and assignments and grading scales explaining in comprehensive detail what I need to do to be successful, I feel unmoored this time of year.

We always talk about new beginnings in January, about green shoots and renewal and cleaning in spring, but I feel freshest and most energized in early fall. (I wonder if I should have been born Jewish, with a calendar that sensibly locates the new year around this time…)

The older I get, the more value I find in simple concrete achievements. I come home after a day of work, during which I have not changed the world, have not fixed anything in a tangible way even if I have smoothed wrinkles, updated information, stetted and accepted copyedits, and pored over tables of statistics and tried to make sense of another corner of the planet. I find myself wanting to hold something and feel the satisfaction that comes with being able to stare at a finished work and say “I made this.”

So. Here is a tart. I made it. It was good.

Very good, in fact. My gold star for September. My small new achievement. My plum nectarine almond tart.

I love plums in baked goods. They turn jammy and retain a hint of sour, like rhubarb or tart cherries do in spring and early summer, and like cranberries in late fall and winter (and any of those fruits, I think, would make good friends with this crust).  I think of plums as a transitional fruit. They are harbingers of apples and pears, and if we are lucky quinces,  though they sit next to the last of the peaches and their smooth skinned brethren, nectarines.

Plums and nectarines look pretty together, no?

Purples and deep reds and oranges with yellows peeking through. Nectarines are bit tarter than peaches, making them a nice companion to plums and a pleasing foil to this sweet almond crust.

This tart is so lovely to look at. The payoff here for the amount of work is simply fantastic. This dessert is company-ready, but it is so much easier than pie. Really, it’s as easy as crumble.

Whirl almond meal and flour and sugar and butter and baking powder in the food processor and press into a (well! greased!, ahem) tart pan with a removable bottom. Press alternating slices of plums and nectarines in concentric circles, and bake until the edges are a deep golden brown.

The outside gets crunchy like mandelbrot (or like biscotti, but not as hard), while the inside stays soft and rich and creamy very much like frangipane studded with tender nuggets of baked fruit.

This one is going into regular rotation.

Plum Nectarine Almond Tart

Adapted from Alice Medrich’s Pure Dessert

This rich nutty tart is incredibly easy to make. The crust is quite sweet, so look for plums and nectarines that are tart to balance the flavor. You can make this entirely with plums, as Alice does, or you could make it entirely with nectarines. I wouldn’t substitute peaches here, as they would be too sweet and the skins unpleasantly fuzzy. I do think this would be lovely with rhubarb, tart cherries, or cranberries in other seasons though. Also, please note that this tart has far less butter than most, which means that you really need to grease the tart pan (I forgot to do this, and was forced to chisel the pieces from the pan, which wasn’t quite the most elegant way to serve it…).

1/2 cup (2.5 ounces) almond meal
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
3 tablespoons cold unsalted btter
4 small plums
3 medium nectarines

Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease a 9 1/2 inch tart pan (with removable bottom) with butter or spray oil.

In a food processor, combine almond meal, sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt and pulse until well mixed. Cut the butter into several pieces, add to the food processor, and pulse a few times until the butter pieces are pea-sized. Add the egg, and pulse until the mixture is thoroughly moistened and has begun to clump together.

Press the almond mixture into the greased tart pan evenly along the bottom (but not up the sides).

Cut the plums into quarters and the nectarines into sixths. Press the fruit skin side up, alternating plums and nectarines, into the crust in concentric circles, leaving a half inch border around the edge of the pan (this will puff up and become the side crust). You may have a few slices of nectarine left over.

Set tart pan on a baking sheet, and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the edges are deep golden brown and the almond mixture peeking out around the fruit in the center looks puffed.

Cool on a rack for about 10 minutes, then carefully loosen the rim of the pan. Allow to cool fully. Serve at room temperature.

Yield: About 8 slices.

At their peak ripeness, summer fruits need little adornment. It’s tough to improve the flavor of a meltingly delicate, sweet tart raspberry or a succulent peach on the verge of bruising.

But when you find yourself up to your elbows in fragrant baskets of the summer bounty that you simply couldn’t leave at the farmers market, it’s time to think about baking.

Pies, crisps, crumbles, buckles, and cobblers are old favorites (with good reason). A slow simmer in the oven can dramatically change a fruit’s demeanor. Things mellow in there; they turn softer and more fragrant. The transformation can be stunning, but some fruits are so vibrant in their natural state it seems a shame to put them through all that.

That’s where this twist on the classic strawberry shortcake comes in. Think slices of bright red strawberries tossed with a little sugar, a dollop of rich pastry cream, and a crumbly little almond cake to nestle them on.

At home at a backyard cookout or at a dinner party, this dessert is familiar enough to pass for summer comfort food and just surprising enough to feel like something new. The toasty layer of sliced almonds on the top dresses the cake with an unfussy elegance. This version is portable and picnic friendly, as the pastry cream, unlike its whipped relative, will travel well in a cooler. It goes down easy just about anywhere and puts all that wonderful fresh fruit to good use.

Almond Cake with Strawberries and Vanilla Pastry Cream

Source: Cake adapted from Gourmet June 2007, p. 143. Original recipe available here. Pastry cream adapted from Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen.

This would be excellent with other flavorful summer fruits–peaches, raspberries, and pitted sweet cherries come to mind as good options. I used vanilla pastry cream here for its portability, but if you are making this at home you could certainly use whipped cream or lightly sweetened whipped Greek yogurt if you prefer. This cake, if stored in an airtight container or wrapped well in plastic wrap, is even better on the second day.

For the pastry cream:

1 cup whole milk
1 cup whipping cream (or heavy whipping cream)
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the almond cake:

3/4 cup whole almonds
1/2 cup sliced almonds (for the top)
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar (preferably superfine, or regular granulated sugar zizzed in a food processor for 30 seconds)
1/3 cup whole milk
3/4 cup butter, melted and cooled

For the strawberries:
1 quart (1 1/2 pounds) fresh strawberries, sliced
2 tablespoons sugar

Make the pastry cream. In a medium mixing bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, and flour until well blended. In a heavy medium saucepan, bring the milk and cream to a low simmer. Turn off the heat. Whisk a few tablespoons of the warm milk and cream into the egg mixture, then gradually add a few more tablespoons of milk/cream and whisk thoroughly. Add the egg mixture to the saucepan with the remaining milk/cream and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened, about four minutes. Whisk in the vanilla extract. Remove from heat. Refrigerate for at least one hour before serving.

Make the cake. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch square baking pan with cooking spray (Bakers Joy works well) or butter and flour. In a dry skillet, toast the whole almonds over medium heat just until they start to smell fragrant. Remove from heat and add them, half at a time, to a blender or food processor and pulse until they resemble a fine powder (but before they become a paste, err on the side of coarseness here).

In a medium mixing bowl, mix the ground almonds, flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate large mixing bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer), add the eggs and beat on high speed until they look foamy, about 15-30 seconds. With the mixer running, add the sugar slowly and beat until the mixture is the thick and the beater leaves a noticeable trail when lifted, about 10 minutes (perhaps a few minutes shorter in a stand mixer or a few longer with a hand mixer). Slowly add the melted butter and the milk and beat until well mixed. Add the flour and ground almond mixture and stir by hand until just combined. The batter will be thick.

Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan and sprinkle with the sliced almonds. Bake until the cake begins to pull away from the sides and the almonds on the top look golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30-40 minutes. Cool on a rack before removing from pan.

In a medium bowl, mix the strawberries with sugar and let them macerate in the refrigerator for an hour or so.

To assemble, cut a piece of cake, and slice it in half horizontally. Add strawberries and a dollop of pastry cream to the bottom half and replace the top of the cake. Enjoy.

Yields about 8 servings.