When the end of the month draws near it means the time has come for another Daring Bakers challenge. The June Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart… er… pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800’s in England.  This challenge was different… in part because I’d never ever heard of a Bakewell Tart or Bakewell Pudding.  But it sounded interesting and rather tasty so I thought I’d give it a go.  Considering I completely lost track of days and didn’t realize until today that the reveal date was… uhm… today… it was a really good thing this recipe could be completed quickly.  “Quickly” as in about 2hrs start to finish.  Oh yeah, I’m definitely thanking Jasmine and Annemarie for that!!

We’ve been pulling a number of extremely stressful and very very long days at work this month so it was no surprise that I thought about this month’s challenge several times… but didn’t actually get around to doing it.  If only “thinking-about” could actually equate to “doing it” – sadly for me it does not. But my intentions were good :)

In reading thru the recipe it didn’t seem difficult… tart shell… jam filling… frangipane.  The recipe for the tart shell was to fit a 9″ tart pan however my “full size” tart pans are either 8″ or 11″. I decided to make the full recipe of each component and use my 8″ tart pan figuring I’d have a bit of the tart dough leftover.  What actually happened was having enough leftover for two-4″ tarts as well.

My jam choices turned out to be strawberry (for the traditionalist in me)… homemade lemon curd (because, I do love me some lemon curd filling in pretty much anything!!)…  and nutella (because DH is a big fan of chocolate and hazelnut).    I messed up a couple of times with the component recipes but in the end using whole eggs instead of just yolks in the crust and granulated sugar instead of icing sugar in the frangipane didn’t seem to hurt a thing.  These tarts were very good and I’m glad I completed this month’s challenge.

The tart crust was almost like a shortbread crust but not as flaky.  I was surprised it came together so well for me considering I have had lots of problems making tart crust using the traditional method.  I think maybe in the past I had been rolling out the dough too thin because this time I honestly thought the dough was still too thick… but it worked!  It worked!  For the frangipane I made sure to grind my almonds very very fine to prevent the texture from being too grainy.   The end result was tasty and I encourage you to try these.  The flavor combinations are rather endless.

If you’d like the recipe and instructions, check out the blog of hostess Jasmine (Confessions of a Cardamom Addict)  or hostess Annemarie (Ambrosia and Nectar).  And while you’re at it, check out the Bakewell Tarts the other Daring Bakers made.

Have a delicious day!