Focaccia Di Mandorle (Almond Torte from Tuscany)

Submitted by tigerduck

"A lovely Italian Almond Torte with a custard filling made with real vanilla from a vanilla bean. Great recipe to use up those extra egg yolks. The dough needs to be left in the fridge for 1 hour."

 

• Ready In: 2hrs 5mins
• Ingredients: 11
• Yields: 1 torte
• Serves: 8

ingredients

• dough

• 250 g ground blanched almonds (8 7/8 ounces)
• 250 g flour (8 7/8 ounces)
• 250 g soft butter (8 7/8 ounces)
• 250 g sugar

• custard filling

• 300 ml milk
• 1 vanilla bean (don't use extract)
• 4 egg yolks
• 100 g sugar (3 1/2 ounces)
• 2 tablespoons flour

• topping

• 3 tablespoons icing sugar
• 100 g slivered almonds, toasted

directions

1. Dough:

2. Mix all the dough ingredients and knead until smooth. Halve dough and form each half into a ball. Wrap them in cling film. Leave in the fridge for 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 180°C/355°F Roll out each dough between 2 pieces of lining paper until you get a circle of 11 inches. Shape the circle with your hands, so that you will get a smooth edge. There is no need to get a perfect circle. Bake 15 minutes or until cooked and golden. Let cool.

4. Custard:

5. Put milk into a pan. Slice vanilla bean lengthwise. Scratch out black stuff inside vanilla bean with the blade of a knife and add it to the milk together with the sliced vanilla bean. Bring to a boil. Let cool.
6. Using an electric mixer, mix yolks and sugar for 2 minutes. Add flour and mix until well combined.
7. Remove vanilla bean from milk. Add yolk mixture.
8. Stirring all the time, cook mixture on medium-low heat until thickened. The mixture mustn't boil.
9. Let custard cool, stirring frequently to avoid building a skin on top.
10. Now you've got two variations. The original recipe says to spread 1 biscuit with the cooled filling, to top it with the remaining biscuit, to dust it with the icing sugar and to sprinkle it with the toasted slivered almonds. As I feared that the slivered almonds would fall off that way when you cut it, I reserved a small amount of the filling and spread it on top of the second biscuit, topped it then with the almonds and finally dusted the foccacia di mandorle with icing sugar.