There is a moment, every year, when strawberries go from firm to suspicious in roughly four hours. This is when this galette earns its keep.
What you need
- 1 sheet of all-butter shortcrust (homemade or shop-bought, no judgment)
- 400 g strawberries, hulled and halved
- 60 g ground almonds
- 50 g caster sugar
- 30 g soft butter
- 1 egg yolk
- A small splash of vanilla
- 1 tbsp demerara sugar, for the edges
What you do
- Heat the oven to 200°C / 390°F.
- Mash together the almonds, sugar, butter, yolk, and vanilla into a soft paste. This is the almond cream — it does most of the work.
- Roll the pastry into a rough circle on baking paper and slide onto a tray. Spread the almond cream in the middle, leaving a 4 cm border.
- Pile the strawberries on top. Fold the border up and over the fruit, pleating as you go. Don’t be neat about it — galettes look better a little tipsy.
- Brush the pastry with a little milk, scatter the demerara, bake for 30–35 minutes until deeply golden.
- Let it cool until you can stand it. Eat with cold cream.
A galette is not a tart. It is a tart that has relaxed.
Goes very well with the kind of afternoon where you keep meaning to do something productive and then suddenly the sun has moved.