Cherry Almond Galette; fresh juicy red cherries with toasted flaked almonds enveloped in crisp buttery shortcrust pastry.
Pies and pastries are always welcome in my gob, even more so when they require minimal effort to get to said gob.
Pastry is my favourite thing to bake with. It can be annoyingly particular, it can have a large margin for error. However, it doesn’t always have to be a fiddly affair. Lazy, messy pastry is often the tastiest pastry.
The Cherry Almond Galette I share with you today is exactly that, a lazy, messy, bloody delicious pastry.
If you haven’t yet encountered the delight of a humble galette, think of it as a more languorous take on a traditional pie. Rather than the precise edges of an open-faced tart, or the long baking time of a classic double-crust pie, a galette offers the best parts of both with half the effort. No fancy dishes, no cutters, no knifework, and definitely no blind-baking. If you can flop some rough-edged pastry over a pile of fruit, you can make a galette.
This Cherry Almond Galette and others like it are a perfect late summer treat. They perfectly showcase the glory of seasonal stone fruits or berries. They blend the sunniness of a fruit tart with the cosiness of a winter pie. Once you have a basic shortcrust pastry down, you can sex it up with peaches, raspberries, strawberries, even savoury versions with tomatoes or summer squashes can be delicious!
Thankfully, this dessert also requires surprisingly few ingredients. While you will need to pop to the shop to get fresh cherries and almonds, the rest is mostly the kind of thing you’d find it your everyday kitchen. If you don’t drink alcohol or you can’t afford the expense on a liqueur, you can easily leave it out of this recipe. I found myself adding it to use up a bottle of Amaretto I had lying around from my most recent recipe, but this Cherry Almond Galette is definitely still delicious without it!
Anyway, stop reading and go make some dessert.
To make this Cherry Almond Galette, simply follow the recipe below.
Cherry Almond Galette
Notes
BE A MAVERICK: if cherries aren’t your favourite, then feel free to use blackberries or raspberries instead!
Ingredients
For the filling:
- 300g fresh cherries
- 2 tbsp caster sugar
- 1 tbsp Amaretto or Kirsch liqueur (optional, use 1 tsp vanilla extract if not using)
- 40g flaked almonds plus extra to decorate
For the shortcrust pastry:
- 200g plain flour
- Pinch of salt
- 120g cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
- 1 tbsp Amaretto liqueur (optional)
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 beaten egg (optional)
Instructions
For the filling:
- Use a sharp knife to carefully halve the cherries, discarding their stones and stalks.
- Place the cherry halves into a bowl with the sugar and Amaretto and stir to mingle everything together.
- Set aside.
For the shortcrust pastry:
- In a large bowl, weigh out your flour, salt and cubed butter.
- Use your fingers to rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. If you have a food processor, you can use it to speed up this process!
- Add the egg yolk and liqueur (if using).
- Bring the mixture together into a smooth dough, adding 1-2 tbsp of cold water to help when needed. If the dough becomes sticky, simply add a little extra flour.
- Once you have a smooth dough, wrap it in clingfilm and chill it in the fridge for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven – 190 C / 170 C fan / 375 F / gas mark 5.
- Unwrap your dough and use a rolling pin or wine bottle to roll it out into a flat circle no thicker than ½ a centimetre.
- Lift the dough onto a flat baking tray or onto the underside of a big roasting tin.
- Pile the almond flakes and then the cherries into the centre of the dough circle, leaving 2-3 inches of bare pastry at the edges. Reserve any juices the cherries have released.
- Fold the edges of the pastry toward the centre, covering some of the cherries but leaving a glorious beaming centre open. Don’t worry about being particular or neat here, galettes are not about precision!
- Lightly brush all the visible pastry with your beaten egg, this will help give the finished bake a gorgeous golden colour!
- Bake the galette in the preheated oven for 40-45 minutes by which point the pastry should be a rich golden brown and crisp-looking on top.
- At this stage, spoon any cherry juices you reserved onto the fruit-displaying centre of the galette and scatter over a handful of flaked almonds.
- Allow the galette to cool for at least 10 minutes before slicing and serving. It is particularly delicious with a scoop of ice cream or a loose dollop of whipped cream on the side!
- Enjoy!
