Bakewell Tart With Jamun Jam

From June till the early part of July is when the berries on my jamun tree ripen. The birds and I get busy. Them picking on the choicest fruits and leaving a carpet of half-eaten rotting fruit. And me tying an old plastic sheet to catch as many as I possibly can. Because the fruits are so soft, they get smashed falling from such a height. In order to break the fall, the plastic sheet/old tablecloth comes in handy.

Another way of gathering the fruits is to give the branches a shake so that the ripest ones fall on the sheet. To do that I go over to our attic from where I can hold a branch through a window and give it a good shake. Dark fruits are full of antioxidants and jamun has many medicinal properties. Which is why during the season, I try to incorporate them in our diet. The first pickings are usually eaten with a dash of rock salt and chillies. Later, as more berries ripen, I make juice, jam and chutney.

This year I made only one batch of jam. But that will last me for a while as I intend to use it sparingly in cakes and tarts. And talking about tarts, the first one I made was a Bakewell tart. I had a handful of fresh fruit left and I used these for the topping.

I used an 8″ tin for my pastry dough. The filling was made with :

• 100 grams of cashew nuts, ground
• 3 tablespoons of melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour
• Sugar as per taste
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons of jamun jam
• A handful of jamun, seeds removed

The pastry was blind-baked. To check out pastry dough recipes, simply type ‘pastry’ on the ‘search’ section. The overhanging pastry dough was folded inwards to create a sturdier crust.

Layer the base of the pastry with the jam. Mix all the first five ingredients together and pour into the jam-layered shell. Scatter the fresh fruit on top. Bake in a preheated 180 C oven for about 30 minutes till the top is golden and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.