Guy's Treacle Tart

I’ve cooked my fair share of treacle tarts. My recipe has been tweaked many times to balance the sweetness and improve the texture. I’ve reduced cream and increased breadcrumbs, and swapped ginger for black treacle. This resulted in a denser, tangy tart to which enhanced the overall flavours.

 Perhaps the two most significant improvements however came when I started using sourdough crumbs and changed the way I baked the tart. Rather than cook it at one constant temperature, I started to bake it at a high temperature before reducing it considerably to complete the cooking process. This resulted in a treacle tart with a crisp, almost brandy snap like surface, and a moist gooey interior.

 The addition of sourdough crumbs was equally rewarding, giving the tart a gorgeous tangy flavour and satisfyingly chewy quality that I just wasn’t getting from a basic white breadcrumb. It’s a good idea to make the filling the day before. This will give the breadcrumbs time to absorb the syrup and swell, further improving the texture. 

To make the Pastry:

Simply rub 125g of butter into 250g of plain flour and 90g of caster sugar until it resembles sand. Add 1 egg and bring together. Form into a disc and then refrigerate. To ensure you have a lovely crisp pastry case it must be blind baked before you add the filling. Roll out the pastry to a thickness of about 5mm. Use the pastry to line a 25cm tart tin, pushing the pastry into the sides of the tin. Prick the base with a fork and then refrigerate for 30 minutes to help set the shape. Put a large sheet of foil over the pastry case and weigh down with baking beans or dried pulses. Bake at 180C for 15 minutes. Remove the foil and the beans and return to the oven for 5 minutes. Brush with egg wash and return to the oven for a further 5 minutes or until golden.

Treacle Tart – serves 10

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Total Cooking Time: approx. 1 hour 

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
  • 1 lemon – juice & zest
  • 600g golden syrup
  • 50g black treacle
  • 200ml cream
  • 200g sourdough breadcrumbs
  • Pinch of salt

Method

• In a large mixing bowl beat the eggs with the golden syrup, treacle, double cream, salt, lemon juice & zest.

• Mix in the breadcrumbs and leave overnight in the fridge.

• Bake the pastry case as above and then pour in the syrup mix. Bake at 170c for 15 minutes. Turn the oven down to 120C and bake for another 25 minutes, until the filling is just set.