Fig frangipane tart

For the Pâte Sablée

Sift together dry ingredients; flour, icing sugar, almond, salt

Add very cold butter cubes and rub the mixture between your hands until it becomes a sand like consistency. This will take around a minute or two

Add egg into the mixture and mix with your hands just until the dough comes together, few seconds

Knead with the palm of your hand for a minute or two (do not over knead and do not use mixer) just until the dough becomes smooth. Form a disk and cover the dough in plastic wrap. Let it rest in the fridge for min 2 hours. You can leave it resting in the fridge over night or you can freeze the dough and use it later

After the dough rested, roll it out into 2mm thickness between two Silicone baking mat. Do not use extra flour for rolling

Place the dough into the freezer for 15 min in between two Silicone baking mat.. Do not remove the mat at this point

Prepare your oven rack with the Perforated "air" baking mat and Perforated tart rings on top

Take the dough out from the freezer and using one of the Perforated tart rings, cut out 8 circles - this will be the bottom of your tart crust. Carefully move the dough circles with the help of an Offset spatula and place them into the rings one by one

If at any point the dough gets too warm to work with, pop it back into the freezer for 5 minutes. You might need take the dough in and out of the freezer 10-15 times. It is extremely important to work with a dough that is cold enough to be able to handle (so not sticky) but not too cold which would result in breaking it easily

Cut 8 long stripes out of the dough, this will be the side of the tart

Carefully place the stripes into the ring one by one. Press each stripe onto the ring so it sticks to it

Place the Perforated tart rings with the pastry dough in them into the freezer for 2 hours

Pre-heat oven to 160C / 320F

After 2 hours take the pastry dough with the rings on them out and trim the top to the level of the tart ring with a sharp knife then place the tarts into the oven

For the Frangipane cream

Prepare frangipane cream (almond cream) by creaming room temperature butter and sugar until fluffy then mixing in 1 egg, vanilla bean paste and finally folding in flour, almond and salt

Pop almond cream into the fridge for a few minutes then fill a piping bag with it

Assemble

After baking the tart rings for 10 minutes, remove them from the oven and pipe almond cream on each to fill approx. 1/2 of the tarts

Place half a fig into each tart. If figs are too big, trim them according to the size of the baking tin you use. Try to place the fig halves in the middle of the tarts while making sure that there is equal amount of almond cream on all sides of the fig. This will ensure that the top of the tart will turn out symmetric with a beautiful fig in the middle

Pop the tarts back to the oven and bake for further 10 minutes

Take tarts out of the oven and carefully remove the rings and bake for another 5 min without rings. Let them cool on the Perforated "air" baking mat