Ingredients

Sweet Pastry

• 8oz/225g plain flour
• 4oz/110g butter, cold, diced
• Pinch salt
• 1 teaspoon icing sugar
• 1 egg + 1- 3 tablespoons cold water

Tart

• 4-5 ripe Comice pears
• 200g soft butter
• 200g ground almonds
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 ½ eggs beaten

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C or Gas Mark 4.
2. Put the flour and salt into a bowl and then rub in the butter using your fingertips until there are no large lumps left. Add the sugar.
3. Break the egg into a little bowl and add one tablespoon of cold water, whisk together and then make a well in the flour mixture and add the egg.
4. Bring together with a fork and then if necessary add more cold water a little at a time just until the mixture comes together (use your hand at this point ) and leaves the sides of the bowl clean.
5. Flatten a little, wrap in cling film and chill for 20-30 minutes.
6. You can chill for longer but if the pastry is rock hard, allow it to sit at room temperature to soften a little.
7. Tart – Roll out the pastry and line an 11” (28cm) fluted tart tin. Prick the base with a fork. Chill for 15-20 minutes or freeze.
8. Bake blind – cover the pastry with cling film and fill to the top with dried beans, then cook for 10-15 minutes, remove the beans and cling film and continue to cook for another 10 minutes or so until light golden.
9. If frozen, cook straight from the freezer in the same way.
10. To make the filling, put the butter and sugar in a food processor ( or cream by hand until soft )and blitz until well combined, add the ground almonds and blitz again.
11. Then add one egg and pulse in, add the other ½ egg (beat a whole egg and use half), pulse again until all combined.
12. Peel the pears, cut in half and remove the core.
13. Put most of the almond mixture in the pastry shell and spread out. Place the pear halves very close together all over the top and then spread the remaining almond mixture over some of the pears.
14. Bake in the preheated oven for around 40 minutes until golden and cooked through

Notes

For a 7 ½ “ tart tin use pastry recipe 4oz, filling 100g almonds / butter / sugar / 1 egg and 2 pears.