Lemon Raspberry Plum Galettes

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I’m going to paint you a picture here, so let’s visualize together. I want you to pretend for a second that this post has no butter or sugar in it. Take those two ingredients away, and we’re left with nothing but fruit. Healthy, unadulterated fruit. Well, if we’re getting technical, we’d also be left with flour, salt, a few almonds and some ice water, but that’s neither here nor there. That’s if we’re getting technical, which we’re not. So we’re just left with fruit. Delicious, guilt-free fruit. That isn’t so bad right? The point is that this is a healthy post. Or as healthy as it’ll get around this here parts. This isn’t a rich dessert by any means. It’s not too sweet, heavy or decadent, which is the kind of desserts my mamma loves. She tells me all the time, “Jon I really like this. It’s not super sweet, heavy or decadent, which you know I love.” Yeah I know that (because she tells me all the time) and because I don’t really like sweet desserts myself. She must get that from me. She also tells me, every time she eats anything I make, “This is why you’re my favorite son!” I have to remind her that I’m her only son, so it totally doesn’t count. I guess what I’m getting at is that you should take advantage of this sort of healthy-ish dessert while you can. They don’t come by too often but when they do, they look something like this. And if they don’t, they should.

Now I’m no fool. I’m not saying that this recipe is so healthy it will cleanse you and make you lose weight. No dessert has that sort of magical power, or else I don’t think it would be considered a dessert at that point. Don’t go around telling people that Jonathan created a healthy weight-loss dessert. Although how cool would that be? Don’t get me wrong, this is still a treat because of the butter and sugar and flour all up in it. But when you look at it in perspective to other things in life, like cookies and cakes and doughnuts and ice cream. Well this here galette is a diet drink compared to all that. So I reiterate my statement from earlier, this is a healthy dessert. I strongly believe that everything should be eaten in moderation. We should be able to eat what we want, when we want. Granted, just as long as we can control ourselves. It shouldn’t matter whether something is too rich or decadent. Don’t go into it asking, how many calories is in this? Go into it with the mindset that that you’ll enjoy just one or two small pieces and not feel guilty about it. Life is worth enjoying every now and then with a few guilty treats. When you deprive yourself from something, that’s when you want to eat it all and all at once. So if you have a small sliver of something rich and decadent that you love every now and then, you’ll learn how to have self-control because you won’t want as often. Food is too good to have a bad relationship with. We already overthink and worry too much about so many other parts of our life, like dating. Food shouldn’t be an added stress to your life on top of everything else. So that’s my two cents on the entire matter. I know you were just dying to read about it. I’ll get off my soapbox now. Arms raised in the air; union union UNION! Oh wrong demonstration.

The other day I was sitting around thinking to myself, “Self, you really need to have more fruit desserts on your blog. I’m sure people would enjoy it. Give them some variety.” So I decided to listen to myself. I’m very smart, what can I say? I took a step back from all the chocolate and peanut butter and frosting and cookies and cake, as of late, and came up with this not-too-sweet-not-too-rich-not-too-decadent dessert. Did you know that’s my mamma’s favorite kind?

I’m going to be completely honest and real with you. The only thing that really matters about this post is the crust. We all know that’s the best part of any dessert with crust. No matter what. Pies, tarts, cheesecakes….pies. (Did I say that already?) It’s my favorite thing ever.

So let’s make some crust shall we? This is a pretty basic butter crust. We’re not doing anything too fancy in this post, so you don’t have anything to worry about.

We of course need butter because what’s crust without butter? A pathetic crust that I wan’t no part of. It’d just be flour mixed with water. You’d basically have plain flat bread dough, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just not what we’re looking for here. Butter helps crust puff up and get flakey which is exactly how you want crust to be. So we needs some butter.

**Tip: It’s important that the butter be super duper MEGA cold. Cold butter ensures flakier crust. I like to pop the butter in the freezer for a bit before I make the crust. That’s a helpful tip, go ahead and steal it. Claim it as your own. I don’t mind.**

Dice the butter and return to the freezer while we continue preparing the rest of the crust ingredients, again, we’re making sure it stays super cold.

We’re making the crust in a food processor, but you can definitely make this in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Or you can be a caveman and do it by hand. That’s okay too, who am I to say anything?

Actually, the caveman method is probably the best because that’ll prevent you from over mixing the dough. I’m using the food processor, don’t judge.

Add the flour, sugar and salt to the bowl.

  

Pulse (or for your cavemen, whisk) everything together until it’s evenly combined. Then add the chilled diced butter and pulse until the butter resembles coarse crumbs, the size of peas. It should hold together when you squeeze it in the palm of your hand.

**Note: If you’re doing this by hand you can use your fingers, a pastry cutter, potato masher, or a fork to work the butter into the flour. Breakdown the butter until it’s the size of peas.**

 

Now, just like a pie crust, you need to add ice cold water to the dough. I like to add a tablespoon at a time while the processor is running and then stop immediately once the dough comes together. You don’t want it to be too wet, and you definitely don’t want to over process it, so be careful at this point. Watch it like a hawk. Tell the dough, “I’m watching you like a hawk! I’ve got my eyes on you.” Show the dough who’s boss.

 

If you’re mixing this by hand and you notice the dough not coming together and too dry, add more water. Remember to add only a tablespoon at a time because you can always add more but you can never take some back. Unless you’re some kind of kitchen magician, in which case, let’s be friends kitchen magician.

Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and form it into a disk.

**Tip: For easy clean up, I like to just dump the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and then use the plastic wrap to bring the dough together. I find that it shapes into a disk much easier this way, plus you don’t have to worry about flouring a board and then cleaning it up. That’s a hassle. So long messy clean up, you’re a hassle.**

Place the dough in the fridge for at least an hour. At least. You just kicked the crap out of this dough. You worked the butter out like no tomorrow. So now it needs to rest and chill. The butter needs to get solid once more because that’s what causes steam in the crust while it bakes and steam creates flaky crust. I don’t know how that works exactly. There’s a whole science behind it and if you don’t know by now, I don’t have a head for science so I’ll just do you all a favor and stop trying to explain it.

While the dough chills, we need to make an almond flour mixture type thing.

I’ll explain later why we need this, but in the meantime, just do as I do and dump toasted almonds, flour and sugar into a food processor.

  

Pulse until the almonds are broken down and the mixture is just a powdered flour-like consistency or coarse meal. Pour it into a bowl and set it aside.

**Tip: If you don’t have a food processor, you can dump the almonds into a food storage bag and pound it with a rolling pin or back of a skillet until the almonds are pulverized. Then just mix the three ingredients together. This method might result in a chunky mixture but that’s okay. Just make sure that there aren’t any big almond chunks, and you’ll be fine.**

Let’s pretend that an hour has passed by, we’ll call it internet magic, and poof just like that the dough is chilled and ready to be rolled out. Whoa, internet magic.

Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface. Cut it into quarters, you want four even pieces. OR  semi-even pieces because let’s be honest I’m not about to whip out a scale or ruler and measure it out to make sure they are exactly the same size. Who has that kind of time? If you look closely later on, you’ll notice that one or two of my tarts are a little smaller than the rest. Oops. I’m okay with that.

 

Working with one dough piece at a time, roll it out into a thin circle. I’d say about 1/4 of an inch thick, then trim the edges to create a clean circle.

**Note: It doesn’t have to be a perfect circle, the galette will be just fine if the dough is sort of an oval shape. I wouldn’t worry too much about getting it exact. I think these kinds of tart look better when they’re rustic and sort of uneven, don’t you? Or maybe it’s just me making an excuse for my laziness.**

This is a plum galette after all, so we’re of course going to need a few plums, and by a few I mean about 5 or 6 depending on their size. They should be slightly firm and not mushy at all. Be gone mushy plums. You’re not welcome here.

Cut them in half, remove the core and then cut the plums into thin slices.

  

Transfer the sliced plums to a large bowl. Then zest a lemon, and add it to the plums.

  

Toss the lemon zest and plum slices together to evenly combine. You can just use your hands to toss them, no need to dirty a spatula or anything. Plus, I feel like your hands get the job done better than any other utensil. Sometimes it’s just necessary to get your paws dirty in the kitchen. You can’t do anything about it.

   

Gather the rest of the ingredients and get ready to assemble the galettes. You have the rolled doughs, two on a baking sheet, the almond flour mixture, the raspberries and of course the lemon plums. We also need sugar and heavy cream, but that’s for later. I’ll tell you all about it when the time comes. Patience, grasshoppers. Patience.

Sprinkle a quarter of the almond flour on each dough circle and spread it out evenly among the surface, but make sure to leave about half of an inch border.  Not only does the almond flour provide great flavor but it also ensures that the filling does’t get too wet from the natural fruit juices.

I promised I’d tell you why this almond mixture is important. Well the time has come. Gather around. The main thing is that it’s great flavor. Almonds are delicious. The other reason, which is the most important, is that this helps soak up a lot of the excess juice the fruits will release while it bakes. This will prevent the tarts from getting soggy.

Next up, arrange the plum slices onto the dough. You can get super fancy and fan out the plum slices, or you can just do it haphazardly and throw the plums on top. Let’s be fancy and fan out the plums. It’ll look a lot nicer that way and after all, don’t we just want to wow everyone with our super awesome baking skills? Whichever method you decide on doing, just make sure you leave a space in the center for the raspberries and enough edge space to fold over the dough.

Place a handful of raspberries in the center of each galette. These you can just plop in the center. Plop.

That’s all. We’re done filling the galettes. That was really easy right? You don’t have to worry about cooking the fruit or mixing it with all sorts of different ingredients, and that’s what I love about it. You can whip up this galette any night of the week and fill it with all kinds of different fruit. It’s great.

 

Now I’m no master baker or pastry chef, like at all. So my crimping and folding is the best it can be. I only pretend to know what I’m doing when it comes to folding over dough to make it look 100% professional. You want to bring up the bottom of the dough and fold it over to create a nice crimped decorative edge. This will prevent the juices from the fruit from flowing out while baking.

You can repeat this entire process with the remaining two galettes and place them on a second baking sheet. I tried stuffing the four galettes onto one baking sheet but needless to say, it did not work, so you end up with two baking sheets. Deal with it, Jonathan. Deal with it.

 

Mine clearly aren’t perfect so don’t feel like yours have to be and that you can’t do it because I always say that, if I can do it, then anyone can. If you look really closely at the bottom right galette here at the top, you’ll notice the cracks and bad folds, try not to judge my galette edge folding technique, it was my first time. The important thing is that it tastes good, right?

They are almost ready to hit the oven and bake, almost. One more step. We need to give them a brush with heavy cream.

**Tip: You can also use a simple egg wash (egg whisked with a splash of water) if you’d like. I had heavy cream on hand so just decided to use that.**

Brush the outer edges of the crust with the cream.

 

And just because we’re super fancy here on this site, we’re going to sprinkle the tarts with turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw basically). This is purely for visual purposes so you don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to. But why wouldn’t you want to? If you can’t find raw sugar, then you can sprinkle it with good ol’ granulated sugar. That’s okay too.

Pop these in the oven and bake for about 35 to 40 minutes or until the tarts are golden brown all around and the bottoms are cooked through. To check, just slip a spatula underneath and ever so carefully left a side up and check to see if it’s golden brown on the bottom.

Once done, remove them from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack before cutting. Serve warm with a dusting of powdered sugar or you can brush the fruit with a simple glaze.

I opted for the simple glaze, although it’s so simple I didn’t even photograph it for you. Visualize with me: Heat up two tablespoons of apricot jam (store bought will do) with two tablespoons of water. You can nuke it in the microwave or heat it in a small pot over low heat. Whisk until smooth and then brush the fruit with that. It’ll give it a shiny gloss and an extra added bit of flavor.

This is the kind of dessert that is perfect for dinner parties or gathering you’ve been invited to. You can show up to a friend’s house with a few of these and watch people go crazy. On the outside they appear to be really fancy and intricate. People will think you spent hours slaving away in the kitchen whipping up these galettes. People will call them tarts, but you go right ahead and correct them. “They’re galettes, actually.” Tell them you spent all day making them, even though you and I will know that it only took you about 1 hour and half, 1 hour of which was just the dough chilling in the fridge.

 

You can make these even smaller and do individual galettes if you’d like. That would be cool. Everyone would get their own mini dessert. These, I think, are slightly too big to be called individual. Although I could definitely eat all four of these and not have a problem with myself after. But when I’m in a crowd or gathering, I’ll restrain myself and pretend like 2 to 3 people can split one. “Oh I can’t eat all of this by myself. It’s much too big, someone share with me.” See, how that works? No one needs to know. Although I just told you so now you know. No one else needs to know. Let’s keep it between you and I.