Summer Jazz Sunday Brunch Menu-Plum Frangipane Tart

Plum Frangipane Tart

Okay, this tart isn’t just any tart. It’s a prize winning tart. Last fall, at a Camp Blogaway reunion day, this tart won first prize competing against all the other great treats brought by some of L.A.’s best recipe food bloggers.

I happen to make frangipane tarts a lot from many different fruits depending on the season, and they’re all great, but I especially look forward to the very short late summer window when I can get Italian or French prunes to bake with this luscious almond paste filling. And that’s one reason I’ve included it in this special Summer Jazz Sunday Brunch Menu. That- and because prune plums are grown in Sonoma County. For that matter, so are almonds. Funny story- when I think of almonds, I often look back amusedly to when I was a newly arrived Bay Area college student- straight from Los Angeles. I was invited to visit a former neighbor (Marie Colson- a lovely French lady) of my family’s from Los Angeles, who had moved to Sonoma County. As Mrs. Colson drove me through Sonoma, she was pointing out things she thought would be interesting. One of those things was the abundant almond trees. I stared at them as we toured, “but where are the almonds” I asked her. She laughed- “oh, Gigi” -yes, that was my childhood nickname, ” you are such a city kid”. That’s when she educated me to the fact that almonds grow in a hull (okay, I’m no horticulturalist) which to me looked like a little sack, or even a not yet mature peach-right?

Regardless of how they grow, I love almond desserts, and this tart is near the top of the list. I hope you’ll give it a try.

Almonds growing in their hulls