Tomato tart tatin

I don’t make many savoury bakes, but this tomato tart tatin is delicious! 

I made this tomato tart tatin for the first time a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised how well it turned out! I had friends and family visiting for the day and wanted to make something tasty to accompany the buffet lunch I was putting together. 

I used a mix of medium tomatoes and cherry tomatoes: de-seeding them all took quite a while – but trust me, the faff is worthwhile! I didn’t really know what I was looking for when cooking the tomatoes, but if you keep an eye on them, you can tell when the tomatoes have softened all the way through. You can chuck all the tomatoes in the pan at the same time, but you will need to take the smaller ones out much before the bigger ones. I expected there to be quite a bit of juice, but there wasn’t very much at all – not sure if this was due to the tomatoes I was using. However, I deglazed the pan with the sugar and vinegar and drizzled these juices over the tomatoes. 

Having watched people bake tart tatins on Great British Bake Off and MasterChef, I fully expected the turning out of the tart to be really difficult! I was very pleasantly surprised to find the tart came out easily and looked really quite pretty! 

Overall, I was really impressed with this tart. It was simple, but a little time-consuming to make, and the completed tart was really delicious – light, crisp pastry topped with sweet and slightly sour tomatoes! It was perfect for a light summer lunch, and would be great as a vegetarian offering at a barbeque, or for a summer picnic. A great idea to use up a glut of home-grown tomatoes!

Tomato tart tatin

Ingredients

1. 25g butter
2. Splash of good olive oil
3. 800g medium and small mixed tomatoes, halved across the middle and seeds roughly scooped out
4. 1 tbsp light soft brown sugar
5. 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
6. 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves or oregano, plus extra to serve
7. 375g block all-butter puff pastry
8. Plain flour, for dusting

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 200C. 
2. Melt the butter with a splash of olive oil in your widest frying pan. 
3. Add the tomatoes, skin-side down, in a single layer (you can do this in 2 batches if they won’t all fit) and cook over a low heat until they have softened and have released their juices. 
4. Lift out with a slotted spoon and rearrange in a tart tin (roughly 23cm), skin-side down – cram them in as they will shrink a little and you don’t want any gaps. 
5. Add the sugar and vinegar to the pan, and cook until the pan juices are reduced and syrupy. 
6. Drizzle the juices over the tomatoes in the tin.
7. Scatter with the oregano or thyme and season.
8. Roll the pastry out on a lightly floured surface to a good 25-26cm round. Lay on top of the tomatoes, and tuck the edges down. Use a fork to prick holes all over the pastry – this will help the steam to escape.
9. Sit the tart tin on a flat baking tray and bake for 30 mins or until the pastry is golden brown and crisp. 
10. Let the tart sit for 10 mins, then run a knife round the edge to release the pastry. 
11. Carefully flip the tart over onto a serving plate or board and scatter with more herbs to serve.

Rhubarb and marzipan crumble cake

It’s been over a month since I last wrote a post! To be honest, I haven’t baked much until recently – I was away for much of July and the hot weather meant that it was just too hot to be stuck in the kitchen with the oven going! However, the gorgeous July weather also meant that my rhubarb kept on growing and I did need to bake something to use it up again!

Having not been particularly impressed with the rhubarb and custard cake I made last time, I decided to have a go at a different rhubarb recipe this time: rhubarb and marzipan crumble cake. I found this recipe recommended online and the only change that I made was the addition of the chopped hazelnuts. I love the crunch and the flavour that chopped hazelnuts give to the crumble mixture on my rhubarb crumble muffins and so decided that they would also be a great addition to this recipe.

This recipe is a definite hit! When making, there seemed to be an imbalance between the relatively small amount of cake, reasonable amount of rhubarb and huge amount of crumble, however, once baked, it turned out beautifully. The cake is deliciously moist and fairly tart and the crumble on top is crunchy and sweet. I took this cake into work and it went down a storm! Definitely one that I will be making again!

Update August 2014
Made this delicious cake again last week and I added 15 drops of Lakeland custard flavouring, which added a delicious sweetness to the cake. The cake took a very long time to cook and was very moist still in the middle. I think that the rhubarb gave out too much juice while cooking and so it would probably be a good idea to draw out some of the juices first. I have adapted the recipe below to suggest this. 

Rhubarb and marzipan crumble cake

Ingredients

1. 150g plain flour
2. 125g butter
3. 25g light muscovado sugar
4. 40g chopped hazelnuts
5. 100g marzipan, coarsely grated
6. 100g golden caster sugar
7. 2 free range medium eggs
8. 1tsp baking powder
9. 400g rhubarb, washed & sliced
10. 15 drops custard flavouring (optional)
11. Custard or clotted cream to serve

Method

1. Place the chopped rhubarb in a bowl and coat with 25g caster sugar. 
2. Preheat the oven to 190C.
3. Grease and base line a 20cm deep, loose bottomed cake tin.
4. Prepare the crumble topping: sift half the flour into a bowl and rub in 50g of the butter. Stir in the muscovado sugar, hazelnuts and the marzipan, then set aside.
5. Cream the remaining 75g butter with 75g of the caster sugar until pale.
6. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
7. Sift in the remaining 75g flour with the baking powder and fold in quickly to form a soft batter.
8. Spoon into the prepared cake tin, and spread level.
9. Tip the rhubarb into a sieve to drain away any juices and then scatter the rhubarb onto the creamed mixture.
10. Sprinkle the crumble on top to cover.
11. Bake for 45 minutes, until the top is golden and springy.
12. Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes and then remove from the tin.
13. Serve slices warm or cold with custard or clotted cream.

Rhubarb Crumble Muffins

So, have been meaning to start this blog for ages and, having had a very lazy weekend, I finally found the time to set something up. Not sure that this is exactly right yet but it's a start at least! 

The plan is to write up my baking successes (and failures - we all have them - fortunately my husband's work are very happy to eat them!), share great recipes, review cook books (I already have far too many!) and write reviews of the many tea shops that I visit with my husband. Being far too middle-aged for our actual ages, we spend much of our free time pottering around villages, farm shops and garden centres in search of a great piece of cake and perfect cuppa!

Today's batch of baking was made complete with rhubarb grown in our own garden. Nearly everything else that we have attempted to grown this year has been a complete disaster - but, thanks to lots of warm wet weather, the rhubarb has done brilliantly! So today's challenge were rhubarb crumble muffins. I have a recipe cut out from a magazine somewhere, but couldn't find it - so this was a bit of a gamble - adapting a recipe I have for other muffins! But muffins are fairly robust and I've made the original recipe a few times with other fruit so I figured it would be fine. The original recipe was Blackberry and Apple Crumble Muffins, found on the Delicious website. It's a really easy, quick and tasty recipe that I've just adapted slightly.  

Update - June 2013
As the rhubarb is well and truly flourishing again this year, I've just made these again. Thought I would pop a note on here as, this time, I added chopped hazelnuts to the crumble and this addition was fantastic - highly recommended! 

Rhubarb Crumble Muffins:

Ingredients

1. 400g rhubarb (halved lengthwise and then diced)
2. 40g castor sugar

1. 300g plain flour, plus a little extra for dusting
2. 1 tblsp baking powder
3. 1 tsp cinnamon
4. 1 tsp ginger
5. Pinch of salt
6. 190g caster sugar
7. 210ml milk
8. 1 large free-range egg, beaten
9. 100g butter
10. Finely grated zest of 1 large lemon

For the crumble topping

1. 25g butter, at room temperature
2. 25g plain flour
3. 25g demerara sugar
4. 25g oats
5. 15g chopped hazelnuts (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/fan180ºC/gas 6 and line a 12-hole muffin tray with paper muffin cases. 
2. Mix the rhubarb with the 40g of sugar and leave to one side.
3. Melt the 100g of butter and leave to one side to cool slightly.
4. Make the crumble topping. Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, hazelnuts and oats and work the mixture with your fingers until it forms nuggets.
5. For the muffins, sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and salt into a mixing bowl and stir in the sugar. In another smaller bowl, beat the milk with the egg, melted butter and lemon zest. 
6. Stir the wet mixture into the flour and sugar mixture until combined. (It’s fine if it’s still a bit lumpy.) 
7. Strain the rhubarb through a sieve to remove any liquid and then stir the rhubarb into the muffin mix. 
8. Spoon the mixture evenly into the paper cases and sprinkle over the crumble topping.
9. Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden. Cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then cool on a wire rack.

These are fab served warm but also freeze really well. I freeze the batch of them and then defrost one at a time for weekend breakfasts – a quick zap in the microwave and they warm up beautifully and taste lovely!