Ireland’s golden, salted butter is recognised as some of the best in the world. We know our tradition of churning butter goes back at least three thousand years. The grass-fed diet of Irish cattle is rich in beta-carotene, giving Irish butter a unique golden colour. Its distinct flavour is further enhanced by the salt used to preserve the precious butter – allowing Ireland to export butter from mid 17th-century onwards. Cork’s historic Butter Exchange became the world’s largest butter market, exporting to destinations as far-flung as Asia and South America. In the 18th- and 19th-centuries, Irish farmers regularly undertook long, grueling, round-trips from all over Ireland, walking the ‘butter roads’ alongside pack horses loaded up with firkins (wooden barrels) of hand-churned butter. Today, local farmhouse butter is making a come-back, being served with pride in top restaurants countrywide.
Preheat oven to 180ºC.
Line a 10" springform tin with buttered baking paper.
To make the pastry, mix the flour and butter in a food processor. Whizz for a few seconds then add sugar and egg yolks, and stop just as the pastry starts to form a ball. Chill pastry for at least an hour. Roll out the chilled dough thinly and line the tin with it.
Blend the butter and sugar together, add half of the ground almonds and then add the eggs a little at a time and mix slowly. Add the remaining almonds and sieved cornflour and mix all ingredients together.
Pour the frangipane mix into the pastry lined tin and bake for 30 to 40 minutes. When cool, arrange strawberries on the tart and serve with cream.
... that Irish butter was traditionally salted for preservation, but butter was once kept in bogs for preservation. A 35kg (77lb) butter barrel found from the Iron Age in a Kildare bog is estimated to be approximately 3,000 years old.
Find out more about the creator of this delicious recipe.
This method of making pastry is very easy and I would recommend using Irish butter as its taste is far superior.