Pear Tart

Flour is just flour here — plain, nothing clever, because you want gluten development low and a processor pulsing in short bursts keeps it that way. Pulse too long, or use warm hands instead of a machine, and you build gluten you don't want; the pastry turns tough and shrinks hard in the tin instead of holding its shape. Icing sugar rather than caster dissolves without grit and keeps the dough tender — caster would work at a pinch, you'd just feel it on the tongue. The pinch of salt isn't for salinity, it's for flavour contrast; leave it out and the tart tastes flatter, not sweeter.

Butter has to be cold, cut in pieces, and left in visible flecks when you stop pulsing — that's not fussiness, that's the whole mechanism of shortcrust. Those flecks melt in the oven and the water in them turns to steam, pushing tiny gaps through the dough. No cold fat, no steam, no shatter — you'd get a biscuit instead of pastry. The beaten egg and "a little cold water if needed" is the minimum-liquid rule: just enough to bring the crumbs together, because excess water is what develops gluten and toughens the case later. Some say you must use ice water from the fridge specifically — no, because what matters is that the fat stays solid when it meets the liquid, cold tap water does the same job in most British kitchens.

The 30-minute chill isn't about the dough getting cold for its own sake — it's about the gluten relaxing and the butter firming back up after you've handled it, so the pastry doesn't slump or shrink when it hits the heat. Skip it and you'll watch your neat border slide down the sides in the oven. Blind baking with beans or ceramic beads weighs the base down so steam doesn't lift it into a dome — if you don't own proper baking beads, dried chickpeas or rice from the cupboard do exactly the same weighting job, they just don't cook afterwards.

For the frangipane, butter at room temperature is non-negotiable for the opposite reason pastry butter is cold: here you want it soft enough to trap air when beaten with sugar, which is where all the lightness in the baked cream comes from — there's no baking powder to rescue you if you skip this stage. Ground almonds give body and that faint bitter-sweet backbone; if you're out, or need it nut-free, ground sunflower seeds get you closer than you'd expect, though the flavour shifts. Caster sugar rather than icing sugar here because you're creaming, not dissolving — icing sugar would sink.

Pear at 175 g is roughly one decent pear once peeled and cored — choose one that's ripe but still holds a knife-edge when sliced; too soft and the slices collapse into the cream rather than sitting on top of it, too hard and they won't cook through before the frangipane sets and the top catches colour. Dark chocolate works better than milk here precisely because it's more bitter — milk chocolate would just make the whole tart sweeter, which it doesn't need. A fan oven at 175°C runs that way for both bakes because even, steady heat all round is what sets a custard-like frangipane gently rather than scorching its surface before the centre's cooked — the 30-35 minute window at the end is your lower bound; the real tell is a frangipane that's puffed and no longer wobbles in the middle, and pear slices that have gone soft enough to yield to a fork but still show their shape. Let it cool before you cut it — the frangipane is still setting as it comes down from the oven, and a warm slice will just slump on the plate.