Raspberry Linzer Torte for French potluck

Raspberry Linzer Torte

This week a friend invited me to a potluck dinner at her house. It was her turn to host a group of French speakers she belongs to. I've heard of these dinners for years and was very happy to go!

I offered to bring a main course or a dessert and she opted for me to bring a dessert. That was music to my ears!

I knew I wanted to make a tart and I knew I wanted it to look impressive. I thought of a fruit tart, but having to drive a half hour in a heat wave with a tart filled with creme patissiere seemed like a bad idea. So it was a perfect time to try making my first Linzer Torte! I've been looking for an occasion for years, so this was very exciting. 

I had no idea how different it would be from other tarts I've made!

I looked around for a recipe that fit in a 9" tart pan and that use only almond flour. I had almond flour at hand and didn't want to have to buy pistachios or hazelnuts to grind. I finally settled on this recipe from the website Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking. I've made a few of her recipes before and have always really liked them.

I noticed while looking for recipes that the amounts of flour, sugar, and even egg, varied enormously. Some recipes use lots of spices, some don't. I didn't get to try the tart, but just from trying some pieces of extra crust I baked, I do think next time I'd look for a recipe that used all white sugar and that had more spices.  

The recipe is very simple and is all about the crust. All I had to buy was a jar of raspberry jam. I made the crust the night before using a food processor instead of cutting the butter in by hand. That is usually my preferred method, but it was already evening when I got started and I was tired.  Little Epicurean has a recipe in which you make the crust in a mixer, and I'd like to try that one some time.

Gemma's recipe says to divide the crust evenly into two discs and to roll one out for the bottom and one for the lattice.  But most other recipes tell you to reserve 2/3 of the dough for the bottom, and 1/3 for the lattice. So that is what I did here. However in retrospect, I think it would have been fine to follow Gemma's suggestion.  There was enough crust to make a nice lattice on top, but I think some of the strips could have been a bit thicker. 

I shaped one of the doughs into a disc, and the other one into a rectangle. When it came time to roll out the crusts, I was VERY glad I'd done this!

It took a long time and a lot of bench flour to roll out this very delicate crust. This is like a pate sucrée which can be pasted back together, but still it was a pain in the neck!  I rolled the bottom out to an 11-inch diameter and part of it tore when I transferred it to the tart pan. But it was easy to paste back together.

So I rolled out the bottom, lined the tart pan, and put it in the refrigerator while I worked on the lattice. This took a long time too.  I followed Little Epicurean's suggestion of rolling out the top crust to a rectangle at least 10" wide.  Working with a tape measure, I cut 1" wide strips.  You want the strips to be 10" long, regardless of their width.  I was able to get about 5 strips out of the first time I rolled it out, then kept having to reshape and re-roll out the dough.  I laid out the strips on a parchment-lined bakers sheet as I went, until I finally had 11 strips. I had one extra strip just in case!  The dough is very soft, and I wanted the strips to be straight.  So I worked with a couple of straight-edged kitchen tools - a cake scraper and a spatula - to press them back into a straight shape.  Then I placed the sheet with the strips in the refrigerator, to make them firmer and easier to handle when making the lattice. 

When it came time to put the tart together, I did deviate from the recipe by docking the bottom. Gemma's recipe didn't say to do this but others did and I didn't want the tart to puff up.

I always always always! make a mistake when making a lattice. My strips never overlap each other in the right order no matter how hard I try! That is what happened this time. So I cut out some heart shapes from leftover dough to stick on the places where the lattice crossed in the wrong order. This worked great to camouflage the imperfection.

When it came time to fill the tart with jam, I wasn't sure how much to use. Amounts of jam suggested in recipes vary enormously. I ended up using the entire jar of jam, which weighed 510 grams. I was nervous to see the jam still didn't come up to the edge of the crust, and started to add strawberry jam from a jar I had in the fridge. But then I Googled this, and I learned that 510 is the upper limit of how much jam you want to use. Because more jam would bubble over in the oven, making a mess, and you want the lattice to sink a bit into the jam. So then in a panic, I removed as much of the strawberry jam as I could. I think in the end there were about 500 grams of jam in the filling.

A final brush with egg wash and the tart went into the oven. You're supposed to bake it for 40 minutes until the jam bubbles. I ended up baking it for 50 minutes because I wasn't seeing the top brown the way I wanted it to. It looked a bit pale. Finally I took the tart out, and I do think in retrospect it was overdone. I took a look at the oven and figured out why. The rack, which looked like it was in the center of the oven, was actually one rung down and closer to the bottom!

The tart cooled nicely and right on time for me to leave for the potluck and not be late. I carefully put it in a pie carrier and headed over.  

I was pleased to see that my friend thought it looked beautiful. No one else really saw it, because the desserts were not on display during the meal and when it came time to serve dessert I was asked to pre-cut slices.  

I was pleased to see that all the slices were gone, and a friend who tried one told me it was very good. But looking at the cut slices on people's plates, I do think there was a bit too much jam in relation to crust.  A Linzer torte is all about the interplay between crust and jam, and should be reminiscent of a cookie. This is why I'm still a bit upset that the crust was probably overly cooked. I hope it didn't taste charred!

I will make Linzer Torte again, probably with another recipe, and probably with ground nuts next time!