By Irene Kappes

I was nine years old when I was first left alone in the tiny kitchen of our Southend terraced house to do some baking. My mother and elder sister had gone out shopping and my dad was occupied with some DIY task or other. I was to make some tarts for tea (in those days we had ‘dinner’ at lunchtime and ‘tea’ early evening).

I carefully measured out the flour and fat (probably margarine or lard) into a pudding basin and began to ‘rub in’. So far, so good; this was the easy bit. Where I hit trouble was in trying to get the whole lot to stick together. This is very difficult if you forget to add water! I battled with this task for some time, chasing the hard, uncooperative lump round the basin and shoving the basin to and fro on the counter until, to my dismay the whole lot landed with a crash on the tiled floor. The basin broke in half, but I managed to rescue the pastry, which had by now just about stuck together, and place it safely on the floured counter. However, in picking up the basin pieces, I cut my finger quite badly on a sharp edge, and it began to bleed profusely. This was the last straw. I abandoned the kitchen, headed out of the front door to look for my mother and sister who, as luck would have it were just coming up the road. I flew through the front gate and down the road, bloody finger held high, tears now flowing freely, and poured out my woes to the returning shoppers.

Once my finger was washed, a plaster administered and I had calmed down, I was allowed to roll out my pastry and finish my jam tarts – about 4 in total. Unfortunately, I had omitted to mention the lack of water in the mix, which my mum and sister discovered later that day, upon testing the said articles at teatime. I think my sister, in particular, was singularly unimpressed.

Now, you may be reluctant to try a recipe from one apparently so unskilled in the art of pastry-making! But let me assure you that I do actually now make exceedingly good pastry. The secret is in the rubbing-in. I spend quite some time lifting and aerating the flour and butter. And I am never heavy-handed, or the result is sure to be hard, heavy pastry. I also never use margarine, although a little trex does help to lighten the mixture.

I’ve chosen to give my recipe for Bakewell Tart, as we rarely eat jam tarts.

Bakewell Tart

Ingredients

For the pastry

190g plain flour

70g butter

30g Trex

I tbsp. caster sugar

Approx 6tbsp water to mix

For the frangipane

100g butter

110g sugar

80g ground almonds

70g self-raising flour

3 eggs

½ tsp almond extract

Cherry jam

Flaked almonds

Method

Grease a flan/quiche tin.

Heat the oven to 180c fan.

Rub in the fat and flour, add the sugar and mix with water

Roll out the pastry and fit to the tin.

Bake the pastry blind (with dried beans to weigh down) for 10 mins.

Meanwhile, mix together the ingredients for the frangipan.

Take the pastry out of the oven and remove the beans.

Spread the pastry case with the cherry jam.

Spoon the frangipan mixture on top.

Cover with flaked almonds.

Bake for 25 mins or until the tart is golden brown on top and firm to press. Remove from the oven and allow to partly cool in the tin.

Remove the tart from the tin when almost cool and dust with icing sugar.