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Hi Daniel. The recipe I use is very closely based on this one,


Here are my notes, which are almost exactly the same. I tweaked a few things from Beth's recipe, including the pastry by adding a bit more sugar as it was a bit too savoury with less.
You can follow Beth's or my instructions or a bit of both, either way, it'll come out nice. :)

For pastry:
150g plain flour
About 30g caster sugar
120g cold unsalted butter, diced.
Half teaspoon salt
1 egg YOLK only
Iced water, couple of tablespoons, be careful as it's easy to make dough too sticky.

Pulse flour, sugar & salt in processor and add butter gradually until you get a coarse dough texture. Scrape down sides in between pulses. Be careful of the blade.

Mix the egg with a little water and add to machine while running to form a dough. Add more flour if too sticky. Form into ball, flatten and wrap and refrigerate for about an hour.

Then remove from fridge, bash the dough with rolling pin to warm and loosen it up a little. Roll the pastry to a circular shape slightly bigger than your tin. I use a 23cm/9inch fluted tin with a loose base for easy removal after baking.

Put pastry into your tin and then mould it into the shape of the tin. Prick fork holes all over the base.

At this point, you can choose to trim the edges or leave them until baked. You can also choose to blind bake it to avoid a soggy base. I don't bother to blind bake and I find the base is usually fine.

Cover it with cling film and chill in fridge to firm it up or freeze for about 15 minutes while making the filling. I find this step, and the 1 hour refrigerating earlier, stops the sides of the pastry from shrinking too much so I generally trim the sides in advance by rolling my rolling pin across the tin.

.........
For Frangipane filling:

120g room temp butter (or baking spread/margarine)
120g ground almonds
Flaked almonds (optional)
50g sugar
40g flour
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
Quarter teaspoon salt
400g tin of pear halves (drained weight about 230g).
Apricot jam for base layer (optional) under filling and to make a glaze for the pears.(optional).

With stand or hand mixer, cream together butter, ground almonds and sugar, scraping sides down as you go.
Add eggs one at a time, mixing in between.
Add flour, salt and almond extract. Continue scraping sides down. Frangipane filling is now done.

Remove the pastry from freezer. *Spread a layer of apricot jam (about 3 to 4 tablespoons, * this step is optional) over the base of the pastry, then spoon on the Frangipane filling and smooth out and level with a palate knife or spatula. You can tap the tin on the work top to help level it out.

Place pear halves all around on top of the filling and one in the centre, leaving some space between each pear and about a centimetre away from sides of pastry to allow for the pastry to rise between them. You can make cuts in each pear if you want to enhance the look, like in my photos.
If you have flaked almonds, you can sprinkle or strategically place a few onto the frangipane filling around the pears. This will toast the flakes. Or you could put the flakes on after baking.

Bake at 350° F centre of oven (I use fan assisted) for about 40 minutes or until it looks golden brown. Ideally before it looks like it's browning/burning areas of the pastry too much.

When removed from oven and has cooled for a few minutes but still warm, carefully transfer to a serving plate. If you don't have a loose base tin, I guess it's best to let it completely cool before removing from tin.

Make optional apricot jam glaze. Stir together 1 tablespoon jam + 1 teaspoon water. Microwave it for a few seconds to heat it up and sieve out any hard bits so your just left with a smooth mixture.

With a pastry brush, brush onto the pears. I like to also brush onto most of the pastry as well.


Sprinkle pastry with powdered sugar for the finished look. If you want a more crunchy texture, you can use caster sugar instead, which is best sprinkled onto pastry while pastry is warm, and probably best before you brush the glaze on.

.......

Whipped cream (optional) sweetened or unsweetened. I like to have a dollop or two of whipped cream with the tart. It brings it all to life and really compliments the pears. It makes it awesome!

A small 150ml pot is usually enough. Just whip it with a hand mixer for a few minutes until it really thickens up but careful not to overwhip.
I sometimes sweeten it by adding about 1 tablespoon or so powdered sugar and 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. You can adjust this to taste.

Good luck with it, and if you make it, do post some photos! :)
 
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I made this birthday cake for my niece recently... didn't have a lot of time so decided to max out on sprinkles! It's hard to tell from the picture, but some of the sprinkles are tiny unicorns, and the larger candies on the top are white chocolate covered popping candy.

View attachment 2209


Looks fantastic Becky! What was your niece's reaction? I bet she loved it. What cake did you bake under the sprinkle?
 
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Just finished some watercolor butterfly cookies.
b5a.jpg
 
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This is the cake I made this weekend. It has a very light buttercream cover, and some buttercream in the layers for support, but the cake is a regular sponge and the filling is lemon curd. It was a great hit with my guests on Saturday, and the best thing is that I've got lots of leftover lemon curd to use this week :)

Lemon Cake.jpg
 
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Looks fantastic Becky! What was your niece's reaction? I bet she loved it. What cake did you bake under the sprinkle?

It was a rainbow sprinkles cake! Didn't get any photos of the inside unfortunately though.

@-Daniel- that lemon cake looks superb!! :D
 
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This is the cake I made this weekend. It has a very light buttercream cover, and some buttercream in the layers for support, but the cake is a regular sponge and the filling is lemon curd. It was a great hit with my guests on Saturday, and the best thing is that I've got lots of leftover lemon curd to use this week :)

View attachment 2239

Wow Daniel that looks spectacular! And lemon curd is actually my favorite filling for cake. Sometimes it never makes it into the cake because I keep sampling and then there’s not enough to fill the cake.
 
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I made this birthday cake for my niece recently... didn't have a lot of time so decided to max out on sprinkles! It's hard to tell from the picture, but some of the sprinkles are tiny unicorns, and the larger candies on the top are white chocolate covered popping candy.

View attachment 2209

This is too cute. When I zoom in I can actually see the little unicorns! By popping candy do you mean like that Pop Rock? Those are pretty big candies? if they are like Pop Rocks one must give off a really big burst of fizz.

Unicorns are so big with girls these days. My niece just had her birthday couple weeks ago and she too had unicorn theme birthday party.
 
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This is too cute. When I zoom in I can actually see the little unicorns! By popping candy do you mean like that Pop Rock? Those are pretty big candies? if they are like Pop Rocks one must give off a really big burst of fizz.

Unicorns are so big with girls these days. My niece just had her birthday couple weeks ago and she too had unicorn theme birthday party.

Popping candy here in the UK looks like dark yellow pieces of sugar (eg like this) and they kind of crackle in your mouth. The popping candy I used on the cake was enrobed in white chocolate and a sugar shell, so you only got the pops when you chewed it. Nice little touch though, and seemed appropriate for unicorn sprinkles!
 
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This is really lovey Lee.

Thank you Norcalbaker. :)


This is the cake I made this weekend. It has a very light buttercream cover, and some buttercream in the layers for support, but the cake is a regular sponge and the filling is lemon curd. It was a great hit with my guests on Saturday, and the best thing is that I've got lots of leftover lemon curd to use this week :)

View attachment 2239

Incredible work Daniel! Looks amazing. That takes some serious skill. I don't think I'll attempt one, it'll probably end in tiers. :D
 
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Popping candy here in the UK looks like dark yellow pieces of sugar (eg like this) and they kind of crackle in your mouth. The popping candy I used on the cake was enrobed in white chocolate and a sugar shell, so you only got the pops when you chewed it. Nice little touch though, and seemed appropriate for unicorn sprinkles!

OK yes that’s like the Pop Rocks. When I was a kid the rumor was if you ate a bag of pop rocks and then drink a bottle of Coca-Cola you would die because it would cause your stomach to explode.:D So of course everyone used to double dog dare each other to do it. But I’ve never seen one of those candies as large as the ones Daniel put on his niece’s cake That’s a big pop candy!
 

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First off: Amazing work on these pages. I’m in awe of the cookie and cake decorations, as those are just not in my wheelhouse. Any-hoo, as you might know from my recent posts, I’m both new to this forum and starting on a learn-to-bake-bread journey (sourdough in particular). As such, I thought I’d post a pic of the first loaf of regular old bread I successfully made. Up till then, the only things I’d made with those little packets of yeast were rolls and a somewhat scary babka. This was a Dakota/Harvest bread. I was pretty amazed when it actually came out looking like it was supposed to: all puffed up, caramelized crust, etc. And, yes, fluffy and tasty. It uses a 7-grain instant hot cereal to cover all the grains and seeds used in typical Dakota/Harvest bread.

Recipe can be found here: https://www.kcet.org/food/weekend-recipe-dakota-bread
 

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First time I've ever made this and boy oh boy, I'm really happy the way it's turned out. Yummy, sticky goodness. :) I had to redo the cake batter. The first time, I tried with a supermarket own brand of baking spread which is basically a copy of Stork margarine, but it just didn't combine properly with the eggs, it curdled and separated really badly. So I threw it and redid it with butter.

This time the yolks combined well. I separated the whites and whisked them to reasonably firm peaks and folded them in last. Apparently this makes the sponge softer. I also added a few tablespoons of soured cream which really moistens the cake even more. I thought it was going to come out a horrible mess, particularly when flipping it over.

Here is my upside down pineapple cake! :D

20190612_181917.jpg

Brightened2.jpg

20190612_182530.jpg
 
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First time I've ever made this and boy oh boy, I'm really happy the way it's turned out. Yummy, sticky goodness. :) I had to redo the cake batter. The first time, I tried with a supermarket own brand which is basically a copy of Stork margarine, but it just didn't combine properly with the eggs, it curdled and separated really badly. So I threw it and redid it with butter.

This time the yolks combined well. I separated the whites and whisked them to reasonably firm peaks and folded them in last. Apparently this makes the sponge softer. I also added a few tablespoons of soured cream which really moistens the cake even more. I thought it was going to come out a horrible mess, particularly when flipping it over.

Here is my upside down pineapple cake! :D

View attachment 2341
View attachment 2339
View attachment 2340


:p @Lee_C that looks so scrumptious! The crumb in the cake is looks nice and soft. And the fruit arrangement looks perfect. You are really becoming quite the baker my friend!!! Good job!!:D
 
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:p @Lee_C that looks so scrumptious! The crumb in the cake is looks nice and soft. And the fruit arrangement looks perfect. You are really becoming quite the baker my friend!!! Good job!!:D

Thanks so much Norcalbaker! :D I'm glad you like it. I'm so pleased with it, it really is moist. I don't know why the eggs went all funny the first time with the baking spread/margarine.

I copied the fruit arrangement exactly from the recipe I used, so I can't claim much credit for that, but I'm glad it kept in place after turning it out. The whole thing tastes very similar to a syrup sponge pudding which is one of my favourite things. It baked for just under 50 minutes on 160c. I used a ceramic casserole dish that my mum gave me, it was the perfect width and depth. :)
 

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