Pastries

The pastry on these frangipane tarts is delicious, I mentioned yesterday I wanted to make the Sable pastry and I used a quarter of the ingredients in the link.  For the frangipane I used 

3 teaspoons of butter

9 teaspoons of caster sugar

1 egg

1/4 of a cup of ground almonds

5 teaspoons of plain flour

Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and mix well, I used an electric hand mixer.  Add the almonds and flour, again I used the mixer and gave it a good mixing.  Half the pastry and all the filling are just right to make six tarts.  Bake at 190C for twenty minutes.  I sifted icing sugar over them before serving.  The pastry that was left over is now in the freezer as this pastry is supposed to freeze well.

The pastry turned out so crisp and melting.  I'm not a good pastry cook so for me this was a success.

This picture was taken on the beach at Titchwell .  The sea must have been very rough for all these shells to have ended up on the beach, there were masses of them.

There is supposed to be a bird having a bath in this picture but I can't see it.  This is part of the marsh at Titchwell.

It was a fine day when we visited Titchwell Marsh Reserve and we were able to have a pleasant walk around.  We saw long tailed tits quite close up in one area and bramblings on the bird feeders.  Graham saw a stonechat.  We saw a lot of the usual inhabitants but my brain won't let me recall them at the moment.  We were very surprised at the number of people who were there too, mainly old codgers like us but also quite a few younger people.