Your limitations are also your strengths. Knowing your limits fuels your creativity, making you follow new paths that deviate from others. Life would be soporific if we all excelled in the same areas as a monotonous conveyor of talent with no individual flair.
So, know your limits, appreciate them and use them to steer you to your strengths. I may to be able to move so well with my medical concerns, but I can make cake. And cake is life….
What are your strengths?
Ingredients:
Pastry
300g Plain Flour
150g Unsalted Butter, cold, cut into small cubes
100g Icing Sugar
1 Egg Yolk
Pinch Salt
Macadamia Frangipane
100g Unsalted Butter, soft
100g Caster Sugar
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 tsp Vodka
100g Macadamia Nuts, blitzed to a powder in a food processor
40g Ground Almonds
75g Plain Flour
½ tsp Salt
1 tsp Ground Ginger
Maraschino Cherries & Icing Sugar to finish
Pillows of whipped cream to serve.
Method:
1. The day before, make the pastry. Put the flour and butter in a large bowl and rub together with your fingertips until it resembles coarse sand, try not to warm it too much with your hands.
2. Mix in the icing sugar and salt then the egg. Mix to form a dough that’s not too wet, or too crumbly. You may need to add 1 tbsp iced water.
3. Form into a ball then flatten into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap then pop into the fridge for 1 hour.
4. Lightly flour your work surface then roll out the dough to the thickness of a pound coin. Using a cookie cutter, cut out rounds slightly larger than your tartlets tins and line the tins, pressing into all the edges without stretching the pastry.
5. Cut off the overhang and chill in the fridge overnight.
6. The next day, preheat oven 180C. cream the butter and sugar in the base of a stand mixer until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
7. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition.
8. Mix in the vodka and vanilla followed by the ground nuts, flour, ginger and salt.
9. Mix until only just combined.
10. Spoon the frangipane into the pastry cases until 2/3 full. Dot with cherries then bake for 30-35 minutes or until risen and golden.
11. Allow to cool a little before turning out, dusting with icing sugar and serving warm with cream.
