Harry's Favorite Treacle Tart

For those muggles out there who are Harry Potter fans, I hope you will enjoy these next two posts as much as I enjoy bringing them to you from the latest addition to my kitchen library, The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook (Bucholz, 2010).  I thought in honor of the upcoming release of the final Harry Potter movie, I would feature a magically delicious recipe or two.

For you muggles (non-wizarding folks) who are not fans...deep sigh...I will endeavor to remember that it is not our appetite for good movies but our love of good food that brings us together and hope you will look at these as interesting new treats as an opportunity to impress any HP fans you know with your knowledge of muggle-friendly culinary delights.

For those in the know, Harry loves him some treacle tart and as it turns out, the recipe in UHPC features currently in-season peaches so this is a chance to try something new to do with them.

Almond-Ginger-Peach Treacle Tart
(instructions have been paraphrased for TCC reader clarity)

Tart Crust

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup finely ground almonds
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter, cut into cubes
1 large egg yolk
1 tbsp heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla

Treacle Filling

1 large peach, thinly sliced
1 cup golden or dark corn syrup
2 cups fresh breadcrumbs (see Notes)
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1 tsp ground ginger
1 beaten egg + 1 tbsp water, for brushing

Combine flour, ground almonds, sugar and salt in a large bowl.

Using a pastry cutter or your fingers, work the butter cubes into the dry mix until it resembles coarse cornmeal.

Beat egg yolk with heavy cream and vanilla, then add to the flour-butter mixture.  Toss with a spatula until the mixture comes together.  Sorry about the lack of photos for the dough-making, there was an "incident" with the egg mixture and in trying to rectify that, photo-taking slipped my mind.

Wrap in plastic and refrigerate anywhere from 2 hours up to 3 days.

Remove dough from fridge.  Use 1/3 of the dough to form a ball, then form a second ball with the remaining 2/3 of the dough.  Put the smaller dough ball in the fridge to keep it cool and firm until needed.

On a heavily dusted work surface, roll out the larger dough ball to an 11" circle and fit it into a 9" tart pan or spring-form pan (highly recommend the latter).  Press it into the bottom and sides.

Lay the peach slices along the bottom of the tart.

Warm the syrup in the microwave until runny (35 seconds will do the trick).  In a large bowl combine syrup with the breadcrumbs, chopped almonds and ginger, mixing well.  Scrape the mixture into the tart shell and spread evenly over the peach slices.

Remove the small dough ball from the fridge.  On a heavily dusted work surface roll out dough to 1/8" thick.  Cut dough into strips with a sharp knife (or pizza slicer) and lay in a criss-cross pattern over the top of the treacle filling (doesn't have to be pretty as you can see from the photo).

Brush the strips with the egg-water wash and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes until golden brown.

Remove tart from the oven and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing the tart from the tart pan (or spring-form pan).

Serve warm or at room temperature.  A scoop of vanilla ice cream might not come amiss at this point (or frozen yogurt for those with dairy issues).

All I can say is, Harry would be so pleased.

NOTES

For the fresh breadcrumbs, I used 2/3 of a small artisan white wheat loaf (about 8" long).  I torn up the bread into small pieces before using the food processor to make the breadcrumbs.

I recommend finding a peach that isn't overly ripe because it will make slicing it easier and give you prettier slices, not like the mangy ones I ended up with.  It will also mean less post-slicing juice mop up as well.