I have a nice new fluted loose bottomed tin to use as well. I started by making the pastry, super easy measuring out the flour and butter and then whacking it straight in the food processor pulsed til it looked like breadcrumbs. Then added three tablespoons of water, and turned it on until the pastry came together. Then I wrapped the pastry in clingfilm and popped it straight into the fridge.
When I was watching the show this week, I learnt that Treacle Tart is actually made with breadcrumbs and zero treacle, who knew?!!? And I know breadcrumbs is best made with slightly stale bread, unfortunately the only bread I had was frozen, but I just defrosted it then, when it was dry it seemed a bit stale so I decided this would do! 150g of breadcrumbs was about 5 slices of white bread, crusts cut off! I then had to get everything else ready whilst I waited for my pastry to cool in the fridge. I greased my tin (my cheats method is just spraying it liberally with my sunflower oil spray), zested and juiced 2 lemons, and weighed out 400g of golden syrup. My teeth hurt just thinking about it!
I then decided about 20 mins had passed and I could get rolling, you have to reserve about a third of the pastry for the lattice top, so I popped some of straight back in the fridge and got rolling out the main bulk of the pastry to line the tin. Something else I've learned from TGBBO is that pastry should be nice and thin, so I endeavoured to get the pastry as thin as possible, then lined the tin. This wasn't too hard, although the pastry was possibly a touch too thin by the time I was done as I had a bit left over, but I patted it all down nicely into the sides of the tin and pricked the base of the pastry with a fork.
The treacle tart is not blind baked so I'm a little worried about having a soggy bottom but hopefully it should be ok. I then warmed through the golden syrup and stirred in my breadcrumbs, zest and lemon juice until I had a nice mixture. Mary said on the show that you have to mix the breadcrumbs thoroughly otherwise the mixture maybe too cloy. Mix mix mix.. then I poured mine into my pastry case. It looked a bit runnier than what I saw on the tv but I didn't have any more breadcrumbs to mix in and I'd followed the recipe exactly so fingers crossed!
Now onto the hard part.. the lattice top. They didn't get this tip on the show, but Mary Berry advocates rolling out the remaining pastry, egg washing it, then putting it back in the fridge to harden it up a bit. You don't cut the strips until you take it out of the fridge again. So this is what I did... I think my lattice strips were a bit too fat so they didn't look great and I followed the method on the tv of laying it out on greaseproof paper first then transferring it straight onto the tart rather than attempting to create the lattice on top of the tart. I just about managed to transfer it, but my strips were definitely too thick...
Somewhere in the middle my treacle decided to rise up in the pastry case, I'm not sure if this is because my oven was too hot (its a fan) or because the pastry had risen underneath... but it rose in the middle and broke my lattice... *sigh*.. but here is the finished article!You can kind of see the cracks right in the middle although it sank back down as it cooled so it it was flat.
It was yummy! Much more lemon-y than I expected. But this took away the super sweetness that I was expecting and that I remembered from school dinners! Pastry was nice and short, thin, and not a soggy bottom in sight! Overall - very pleased with todays efforts!
Here it is looking pretty with a scoop of vanilla icecream on top!
