Summer Fruit Tart

August 2022

Whenever we drop into friends Livia and Nello’s house in Tuscany, they seem to have a freshly made crostata to eat, made with their own jam. Livia’s pastry is flavoured with citrus zest and vanilla. It is light and crumbly as it has the addition of baking powder. Use buckwheat flour if you want it gluten-free. I have used a whole orange in the pastry and jam; 3 long strips of skin and the juice for the jam and the rest of the zest for the pastry.  You can also add soft berries and in my version I added some mirabelle plums from my garden.

Ingredients - Serves 12

Serves 12

For the jam

1 orange

400g (14oz) mixed fresh or frozen berries or other soft fruit

2 teaspoons vanilla extract or 1 vanilla pod, split

3 tablespoons honey or muscovado sugar, or 5 tablespoons erythritol

For the pastry

75g (2¾oz) hazelnuts or walnuts, pecans or almonds or a mixture

100g (3½oz) fat Medjool dates (approx. 6) or 40g (1½oz) brown muscovado sugar or 75g (2¾oz) erythritol

100g (3½oz) wholemeal spelt or buckwheat flour

25g (1oz) butter, at room temperature

1 egg

finely grated zest of the orange for the jam (see above)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking powder

First use a small, sharp knife to cut 3 long strips of zest from the orange. Put these into a large saucepan. Now finely grate the rest of the zest (only the dark orange layer, not the paler pith) into a large mixing bowl.

Juice the orange and add this to the saucepan with the berries, vanilla and either the honey, sugar or erythritol. Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring frequently to make sure it doesn’t catch. Allow it to bubble away, stirring often, for 5–15 minutes until it reaches a jammy consistency and while stirring you see the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F/gas mark 6 and Line a 23cm (9in) shallow cake tin with baking parchment.

To make the pastry, whizz the nuts with the dates (or other sweetener) and flour in a food processor to grind the nuts to a coarse flour and break up the dates. Add the remaining pastry ingredients and whizz again briefly but just enough to combine them. If you are doing this by hand, chop the nuts and dates as finely as possible with a cook’s knife on a chopping board. Put them into a bowl with the rest of the ingredients and stir though.

Transfer the pastry to the prepared tin. Using a small bowl of water, lightly wet your fingertips and use these to flatten the pastry out to line the tin. Push the pastry up the sides of the tin by 1.5cm (3/4”). Any extra can be rolled into balls for decoration.

Pour the jam into the case, removing the strips of orange zest as you find them. Smooth the jam evenly over the base and bake the tart for 20 minutes or until the pastry is lightly browned and set firm. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes before carefully removing from the tin. Serve the tart warm or at room temperature still in the paper case.

Per serving with honey and dates: 19.3g net carbs, 3.3g fibre, 3.1g protein, 7.9g fat, 162kcal. Per serving with honey and sugar: 16.9g net carbs, 2.7g fibre, 3g protein, 7.9g fat, 151kcal. Per serving with erythritol: 9.2g net carbs, 2.7g fibre, 2.9g protein, 7.9g fat, 123kcal