This is a cake from my childhood. A mixture of sweet almond sponge mixed with raspberry jam and sweet shortcrust pastry is the epitome of English Afternoon Tea. Go on try it, it’s worth it.
I recently made Pear and Frangipane tart and had some pastry and almond sponge left over, reluctant to throw it away I remembered this lovely traybake and recreated it. The only problem was that it was difficult not to eat the lot so I gave the rest to my Mum who finished them of pretty quickly.
Ingredients: for 12 Almond Slices
Pastry:
125g plain flour
50g butter, cold and cubed
30g caster sugar
Approximately half an egg
Almond sponge or frangipane:
50g soft butter
50g caster sugar
1 large egg
50g ground almonds
a few drops of almond extract
Raspberry jam
Slivered almonds
- Preheat the oven to 180oc/Gas 4/AGA Baking oven or roasting oven with plain cold shelf above.
- Make the pastry: rub the butter into the flour until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
- Stir in the sugar, add the egg a little at a time and use the knife to ‘cut’ and stir into the dry mixture, keep adding until it forms a stiff dough, add a little cold water if the pastry is too dry. Cover with cling film and pop it into the fridge for 30 minutes.
- Make the frangipane: cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon or in a mixer until it’s light, fluffy and drops off the end of a spoon easily. Mix in the eggs and ground almonds.
- Grease a 20cm square cake tin, break off pieces of pastry and press these into the tin to line it. You could roll the pastry out but this adds to stress and you have to be careful not to add too much flour, it’s up to you. Just make sure that you cover the base and sides of the tin up to around 1.5cm. Make sure that the pastry is even and not too thick. Pour over baking beans and bake blind for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 30 minutes. If you have an AGA omit the baking blind stage.
- Spread the pastry with a thick layer of raspberry jam.
- Spoon the frangipane over the jam; spread the mixture almost to the edge, leaving a gap of around 2cm. Scatter flaked almonds over the surface of the frangipane.
- Bake for around 20-25 minutes until the frangipane is golden brown. Remove the tray from the oven and move to a wire rack to cool. Slice into 12 and serve.
