Cherry Almond Tart

I adapted a French frangipane (almond tart crust) recipe without the flour. I've had a bag of Townsend Farm organic dark sweet cherries in the freezer, and they were perfect for this.

The crust is almond meal, sugar, egg yolks and butter, with egg whites folded in. It leaked a bit out of my tart pan, so be sure to bake it on a cookie sheet. It would also work in a cake pan, but it might stick. Make sure to line any pan with parchment. 

Unbaked tart

Cherry Almond Tart

Gluten free

Serves 12 

Ingredients

2 cups almond meal
2 tbsp potato starch, corn starch or rice flour
8 TB (1 stick) softened unsalted butter
4 eggs, separated
¾ cup sugar

pinch of salt

1 ½ cups tart cherries, frozen or fresh
Turbinado (coarse) sugar for sprinkling on top (optional)

Lemon zest (optional)

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350. Beat the egg whites to soft peaks and set aside. Combine the softened butter, egg yolks, sugar, potato/corn starch or rice flour, salt and almond meal in a mixing bowl or food processor, Blend or beat just until smooth. Fold the egg whites gently into the almond mixture.

Line the bottom of a tart pan or shallow cake pan with parchment. Spoon the crust mixture in, and smooth the top with an offset spatula or flat knife. Scatter cherries evenly across the top, and sprinkle with coarse sugar. If using a tart pan, place on a baking sheet because the crust could leak a little. Bake 30-40 minutes, until the middle is firm and bounces back to a touch, and the surface is evenly browned. Sprinkle with lemon zest while still warm. Let cool for at least 30 minutes, or it will be hard to remove from the pan. 

More Books

But first a shot of my birthday present, a fancy Ninja blender.

Purple cabbage in a smoothie is actually really good. If there are enough berries, you can't taste the cabbage. And finally I found something to do with the cranberries I somehow over-purchased at Thanksgiving. Costco sells giant bags of frozen spinach and kale, so I tossed some of it in on top of the bottom layer of frozen raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. Someday maybe a Vitamix, but for now we're having fun coming up with combinations. So much better than making smoothies in the food processor. Knocking down those suggested daily servings of fruits and vegetables while hardly even trying. Until R gets tired of smoothies, which I'm sure will happen soon.

I wanted to keep a record of some of R's favorite books right now. This one was from Santa this year. It's one of the most entertaining books I've ever read.

"The antidote to fuzzy thinking!"

It's such a funny, imaginative treatment of a dry subject. My favorite part of studying logic was always the examples of bad arguments.

These are far and away her favorite books right now.

Beautifully drawn cartoon of the Japanese folk tale, "The Boy Who Drew Cats." We are big fans of the animated version narrated by William Hurt. We checked out several versions of the tale from the library, to compare illustration styles.

Three books that happened to be on the dining room table. A friend gave me Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in high school, and we're starting lessons from it. I wish I knew what happened to my original copy. I found this one at the thrift store.

This is a fantastic book to teach shape, color and composition. How powerful lines are, the emotions they evoke.

And finally, another book to immerse yourself in, by the author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick. Wonderstruck.

From the website: "A boy named Ben longs for the father he has never known. A girl named Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother's room, and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing.

Ben's story, set in 1977, is told entirely with words, while Rose's story, set fifty years earlier, is told entirely with pictures. The two stories weave back and forth before ultimately coming together. Rich, complex, affecting, and beautiful–with over 460 pages of original artwork–Wonderstruck is a stunning achievement from a uniquely gifted artist and visionary."