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Making pies/tarts can be scary, right? Pastry can seem fiddly and unpredictable. Sometimes it’ll shrink when you bake it, sometimes it’ll crumble and crack. WHY?! Well I definitely don’t have the answers for you 🙃 but I highly recommend buying Julie Jones’ recipe book “Soulful Baker”. Her sweet shortcrust pastry recipe has never failed me and she troubleshoots many of those common problems we all encounter. 
If you’re up for trying to make some marmalade yourself, I used Delia Smith’s recipe, which you can find here, and swapped seville oranges for blood oranges. 
Continue reading for some Top Tips or skip down to the recipe if you don’t care 🤙🏾

Freezing

There are few things that can’t be frozen in life, cream cheese is one of them. But for most other things it’s the perfect waste prevention solution. The safest way to defrost items is to move them to the fridge the day before you need to use them, allowing them to thaw but not warm up too much.

• If you don’t have a use for the leftover egg white you’ll get from making the pastry, freeze it in a sealed sandwich bag or a freezer safe container. The same can be done with egg yolks. Make sure to label what you put in the freezer with the quantity so you know how much you’ve got for later use. 
• Any excess pastry can be wrapped and frozen to make tartlets with at a later date or combined with other excess pastry to make a big tart.
• Zest ALL the oranges you use for the topping of this tart for use in future bakes. 1 orange produces about 2tsp of zest which may be useful to know when you come to use it later!
• Guess what, frangipane can be frozen!

Prep

For this recipe, every component can be made ahead of time. The pastry, frangipane and candied oranges can be made 2 days in advance and the marmalade (if you’re making it), months! As this recipe calls for the tart shell to be blind baked, you might want to do this a couple of days before so you are not waiting around for it to cool before you fill it. Store your baked tart shell in an airtight container for up to 3 days before you need to use it.
If you make the frangipane beforehand it’ll need to be stored in the fridge. Make sure to bring it to room temperature so it is a spreadable consistency. This will make life a lot easier when it comes to filling your tart. Cold, straight from the fridge, frangipane will be hard to work with and will result in you picking up marmalade when you try spread it.

Recipe

Serves: 8- 10
Prep Time: 2 hrs
Cooking Time: 30 mins (blind baking) 40 mins (final tart)
Difficulty: 3.5/5

Equipment
Rolling pin
8″ tart tin
baking beans/dried pasta
wide, shallow pan

Ingredients

Shortcrust Pastry (adapted from recipe by Julie Jones, Soulful Baker)
230g plain flour
125g butter, chilled and diced
50g icing sugar (sieved)
4 tsp rosemary (finely chopped)
1 egg yolk
2 tbsp milk (plus 1 tbsp extra for a milk wash when blind baking the tart)

Candied Oranges
4 medium blood oranges (you can use normal oranges if not available, note you may only need 2 if they are large)
55ml water
55g caster sugar

Frangipane
105g butter, soft*
105g caster sugar*
zest of 1 orange (use the oranges you candy)
2 eggs

* the weight of the butter and sugar should be equal to the weight of your eggs. Crack your eggs into a small bowl and weigh them before you weigh out your other frangipane ingredients in case the eggs you are using are smaller/larger. Adjust accordingly. e.g. 2 x eggs weight 110g= use 110g butter, 110g sugar.

170g + 1 tbsp your fave orange marmalade (see above for link to recipe if making your own, I made mine with blood orange)
35g flaked almonds

Method

Shortcrust Pastry
1. Place flour and butter in bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment and beat on a low setting until mixture resembles fine bread crumbs – if using your hands, rub the butter and flour between your finger tips until mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.
2. Add the icing sugar and rosemary. Stir until combined.
3. Add the egg yolk and milk and mix until it just begins to come together to form a dough – don’t over mix.
4. Turn the just combined dough out on to a clean work surface and bring the pastry together to form a ball.
5. Push down the pastry, flattening it into a disc about 1cm thick (this will help you roll it out)
6. Cover so the pastry doesn’t dry out and refrigerate for AT LEAST 1 hour. This gives the gluten strands time to relax and settle.
7. Once pastry has rested in the fridge roll out until it is large enough to line your tin with some pastry completely hanging over the edge
8. Make sure to push the pastry into the edges of the tin, if your tin is fluted use the handle end of a wooden spoon to do this and follow the grooves of the tin.
9. Place lined tin in the fridge for 30mins.
10. Preheat oven to 200c/180c fan.
11. Remove chilled tart tin from fridge and gently prick all over the base with a fork.
12. Put a piece of baking paper on top of the tart and cover with baking beads – make sure the baking paper is gently pressed down into the edges and the whole of the base is covered with baking beads to prevent it rising.
13. Bake in preheated oven 15 mins.
14. Remove from oven. Carefully spoon out your baking beads and lift off the baking paper.
15. Return to the oven for a further 5 mins.
16. Remove from oven. Fill any cracks or holes with leftover uncooked pastry, being careful not to break pastry when you add the dough. Brush the base and sides lightly with milk .
17. Return to the oven and bake for a further 10-15 mins or until the pastry is golden all over.
18. Remove from oven and leave to cool completely in the tin before trimming over hanging pastry. Leave pastry case in tin for later use.

Candied Oranges
1. Prepare oranges; zest oranges setting aside zest of 1 orange for later use and freeze remainder. Remove outer skin with a knife making sure you remove the pith too but try mot loose too much fruit. This method works well but they waste far to much fruit! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv3AWnJrjks.
2. Cut your peeled orange into 0.5cm thick rounds.
3. Put the sugar and water in the wide, shallow pan and warm over medium heat for about 4 mins until all the sugar has dissolved and it is boiling.
4. Add your orange slices to the pan, put them flat and try not overlap them. Reduce to a low heat and simmer for 5 mins.
5. Remove pan from heat and leave oranges to cool in the pan.

Frangipane
1. In a stand mixer, cream together butter, sugar and, orange zest until light and fluffy. This will take about 5 mins.
2. Add the eggs and mix until combined. Don’t worry if it splits. Can be used straight away.

Assembling Tart
1. Preheat oven to 180c/160c fan.
2. Spread 170g of marmalade over the bottom of blind baked tart case still in its tin. Carefully spread the frangipane on top. You can pipe your frangipane on top and the smooth it out to prevent the marmalade being picked up and displaced when you spread it.
3. Remove the candied oranges from the syrup, reserving the syrup in the pan, and arrange in rings from centre of the tart outwards leaving a border between the oranges and the edge of the tart.
4. Sprinkle flaked almonds along edge of tart, filling the space left.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 40 mins or until frangipane is set and skewer comes out clean. Remove from oven.
6. When you have removed the tart from the oven heat the leftover syrup from your oranges with 1 tbsp of marmalade until the marmalade has become runny.
7. Brush this syrup over the oranges of your still warm tart.
8. Leave the tart to cool completely before removing from it’s tin and devouring with custard!

This tart will keep for 5 days in an airtight container. And guess what? It can be frozen! I slice leftovers up and wrap them together in foil so I can remove a slice at a time from the freezer when I fancy it!

Hit me up with you questions,
KB xxx