British Expatriate Network

Does anyone remember the little tarts you got in the bakeries in the East End of London, they had a faintly almond tasting filling and were topped with coconut and icing. Does anyone have the recipe

Are they Bakewell Tarts?

Sounds like it doesn't it although they're a northern thing aren't they?

No coconut in a Bakewell, though.... (I think)

I think that some places put some soft icing and coconut on bakewells

And NO they aint a northern thing. Bloody ' ell Northerners'll claim anything. I seem to remember that Bakewell is in Derbyshire, is that north or midlands oh well.

erm..... Bakewell is in the north. If you have to ask, you're a Southern Poofter. Or so I've been told. mrgreen

oi oi.....barking mad eh, a happy hammers fan I'll take it? :mrgreen: From a fellow eastender born and bred, don't really know that recipe, but do remember those cakes

:lol: :lol:

I took a look, and its just North of Newcastle under Lyme and that's midlands, but just south of Macclesfield which I would say is North. OK its North. Some of us were actually dragged, kicking and screaming, north of the North Circular Road sometimes. My brother and I were sent to North Staffs to escape the V2s and went back to London after five months with accents so thick that no one could understand us.

We paid our dues.

Thick accents.....ah those shock

my mouth waters every time I think of them....I was at home this Spring and yes I did see United play, I'm still singing "Bubbles". I got some of the little cakes in question at Romford market. I got my yank husband hooked on them, now he wants me to cook them. Thanks for all the input....who knows maybe the recipe will show up.

You got my interest going so I took a look at the British cookbooks I inherited from my wife. On occasion, I have a sudden yen for something from the past, and bakewells have been among them. It has been frustrating.

They could be macaroons with icing and coconut also. The recipes I have here are for macaroons which are individual tarts and two recipes for large bakewells. I imagine with both, you could adapt the large recipe to individual tarts, although I don't think there was much difference in the eating.

This is awful, looking through these recipes, my mouth is watering dammit. I'm [strike]not a fast[/strike] a bloody slow typist. so I'll do it in word and post it here later today. Gotta go, its mealtime for the cats and they get annoyed if they are not fed on time, they walk on the keyboard, typing nasty words that would get me banned from polite society, and might even get me banned from here.

From the Be-Ro Book
I expect that you have your own recipe for short pastry, but I put this in so you can gauge the amount required. You’ll see what I mean.

One recipe, Short Pastry.
8 oz Self raising (Self rising) flour. I think SR flour is unusual
½ tsp Salt
1 oz Sugar
2 oz Lard
2oz Margarine
Cold water, approximately 8 teaspoonsful
Mix flour and salt in a basin
Rub in the lard and margarine to a breadcrumb consistency.
Stir in the sugar, and with a knife, stir in the cold water to make a stiff dough



Macaroons
2oz Sugar
2oz Ground Almonds
Rather less than one egg
A little raspberry jam

Oven @ 375oF
Mix almonds and sugar with sufficient beaten egg to make a soft mixture ( a whole egg will be too much)
To make 12 cakes, roll out half a recipe of short pastry, thin and line 12 patty pans.
Put one third of a teaspoonful of jam on each. It doesn’t say, but I think you spread it.
Then one teaspoonful of the almond mixture on each.
Sprinkle with caster sugar (I don’t know what that is called here)
Make thin strips of pastry from cuttings, and lay across at right angles.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

Bakewell Tart

Oven @ 350oF-375oF
6oz Short pastry (That looks like very slightly less than half a recipe)

2 oz Margarine
2 oz Sugar
2 oz Ground rice
1 oz Ground almonds
1 egg
2 Tablesp. Jam or Lemon curd
A few drops of almond essence if desired

Line a 7” sandwich cake tin with the pastry and coat with the jam.
Cream the margarine and sugar.
Mix together, the almonds and ground rice.
Add the beaten egg and the ground rice mixture, alternating a little at a time, to the margarine.
Spread the mixture carefully over the jam and bake for 40 to 45 minutes.

My wife made marvelous pastry with shortening but it was superb when she used butter.

Thick accents? That'd be Cockney and Estuary, surely? ;) :P

.....I guess that is why most people understand southerners and not northerners, ala Michael Cain, Jamie Oliver, Bob Hoskins VS Paul Gascoigne, Kevin Keegan, Alex Ferguson

No, We had to learn a new language if we wanted to survive. We weren't allowed to be real cockney at home. My mother was from Somerset, so there was some West Country mixed in.

When I came here, I met my wife who was from Hull. It was funny listening to our daughters when they were very young, The first one had two sets of vowel sounds, then she started to morph into an American accent, That meant that the next two had three sets; until they also went American.