Is there anything more English than a Bakewell tart?
Well in the new movie The King's Man this most English of desserts is served to one of the most notorious Russians in history,
so thank you to 20th Century Studios' The Kings Man for the paid support for the creation of this video
as we create a period Bakewell tart, this time on Tasting History.
So I cannot tell you how excited I am to make this video because I was asked to do it by my old co-workers,
the people that I worked with before I started Tasting History, all came full circle.
So when deciding what to make to tie into
The King's Man it was pretty obvious because there is a scene in the movie where the character of Rasputin
eats a Bakewell tart, devours it even.
And it's interesting, at least if you think food history is interesting, because at the time that this movie takes place around WWI
the Bakewell was going through a bit of a change from the Bakewell pudding
to the Bakewell tart.
So this recipe from Isabella Beeton's 'The Book of Household Management' is sort of the perfect transitionary recipe.
Like one of those transitional fossils in paleontology but with more sugar. See she still calls it a pudding
but it definitely takes the form of a tart.
"Bakewell Pudding. (Very rich)
Cover a dish with thin paste, and put over this a layer of any kind of jam, 1/2 inch thick;
put the yolks of 5 eggs into a basin with the white of 1,
and beat these well; add the 6 ounces sifted sugar, the 1/4 pound butter, which should be melted,
and the 1 ounce of almonds, which should be well pounded; beat all together until well mixed,
then pour it into the dish over the jam, and bake for an hour in a moderate oven.
Time: one hour. Average cost: one shilling sixpence."
I love that she tells you how much the dish should cost, kind of cool.
She actually has another recipe in the book for a more plain version that instead of using
a pie crust or a tart dough it uses just bread crumbs but everything else is pretty much the same.
Now if you look at even earlier recipes they tend to be quite different because they usually had
candied fruit and brandy in them and resembled more of a traditional English pudding,
but for this one you can totally forego the candied fruit and just have your brandy on the side.
So for this recipe what you'll need is: tart dough made with 8 tablespoons or 113 grams of cold unsalted butter,
3/4 of a cup or 80 grams of powdered sugar, 3 egg yolks, 1 and 3/4 cups or 210 grams of flour,
and a pinch of salt. Then for the filling you need one and a half cups or 480 grams of raspberry jam,
you can actually use any jam that you want to but raspberry is traditional now so that's what I'm using.
5 egg yolks plus 1 white, a heaping 3/4 cup or 170 grams of caster sugar,
8 tablespoons or 113 grams of butter melted, and a quarter cup or 30 grams of almond flour.
Now this is a lot less almond than a modern Bakewell so we're going to add flaked almonds onto the top for decoration
and should help with the almondiness.
Also this is the perfect time of year to make this dessert because while Mrs. Beeton says it can be made at any time
she does include it in only one of her set menus
and that is for a Wednesday in December.
"Plain Family Dinners for December 1. Boiled neck of mutton and vegetables;
the broth served first with a little pearl barley or rice boiled in it
2. Bakewell pudding."
Aren't you glad we're making the Bakewell instead of the mutton neck? I sure am.
So first let's make our tart dough. Add the cold butter and salt to a bowl and then sift in the powdered sugar,
and cream it all together for a few minutes until you have a nice fluffy paste.
Then add in the three egg yolks and beat for about a minute or until it looks smooth.
Then sift in the flour and very slowly mix until it gets just incorporated and the dough is nice and crumbly.
Then turn the dough out onto some parchment and cover it with another piece of parchment
and then roll it out into a thin disc a little more than an eighth of an inch thick.
Then you want to pop that in the fridge for about 30 minutes and once it's chilled you can line a tart tin or a pie tin with the dough.
Then cover it and put it either into the fridge or better yet put it into the freezer for about 30 minutes
while you preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 205 Celsius.
Once the tart is chilled line it with some aluminum foil and fill with pie weights.
Then set it on a baking sheet and pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes.
Then take it out remove the weights and the foil,
then bake it for another 5 to 10 minutes or until the bottom and the edges are a nice golden brown.
Then take it out of the oven and let it cool completely while you turn your oven down
to 325 Fahrenheit or 165 Celsius and you make your filling.
So beat the 5 egg yolks and the 1 white in a bowl until smooth.
Then while still beating add in the sugar and mix until you have a nice pale yellow,
and then mix in the melted butter. Finally add in the almond flour and mix until smooth.
Then once your crust is cooled spread the bottom with the jam and then slowly pour the filling over it, if you do it too fast
it'll disrupt the jam and you'll get jam on top
and filling on bottom and you don't want that. You want the jam on the bottom.
Then you can leave it plain or decorate it with some almond flakes.
Then pop it in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes or until the custard has just set.
Now the character in The King's Man who eats this tart is based on a real person Rasputin,
and while the movie is of course fictional many of the events and the characters are not.
It's filled with real-life historical figures from the English General Herbert Kitchener
to European monarchs like Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II and King George V,
but for my part the most interesting characters are a group that in the movie they call the Flock.
And they include people like the Austrian clairvoyant Erik Jan Hanussen
and the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.
And a little homework for you you should brush up on the history of all of these characters but
I will start you off with a background of three of my favorites.
So the three historical characters in The King's Man who actually in real life
I find the most interesting are Gavrilo Princip, Mata Hari and Rasputin.
First Gavrilo Princip he was in many ways the guy who kicked off WWI.
See he was a Bosnian Serb who belonged to a terrorist group called The Black Hand,
and in 1914 the perpetrator of an event that kind of kicked off the war to end all wars,
and what's really interesting is the day that that happened because it's one of those like
"what if anything had changed" kind of days in history.
So the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie arrived in Sarajevo on the morning of July 28 1914.
They were in the third car of a six-car motorcade
and Princip along with five other conspirators were at different points along their route
with instructions to take them out.
Well the first person that they passed lost his nerve and didn't do anything but the second one threw a grenade at the cars,
but it was on a timer and he timed it wrong and it blew up the fourth car instead of the third car.
Well obviously the jig was up and the Archduke's car sped away ruining the chances for the other conspirators including Princip.
Well Princip was so dejected that he decided he needed a snack to cheer him up which
is actually the way that I deal with disappointment as well and it's not a healthy relationship with food,
but regardless that's what he did. He went to Moritz Schiller deli to have a little nosh.
Well by coincidence as it turns out the new schedule because everything
obviously was kind of thrown off that day, the new schedule took the motorcade right by the deli,
and Princip saw him, stood up, pulled out his gun and shot the Archduke and his wife killing them both.
He was this close to not starting WWI,
but alas he did.
Countries were angry, alliances were set and only a month later Europe was at war.
And a big part of WWI was espionage and in a way that's kind of what The King's Man is all about.
It's about espionage but in The Flock, in the movie, there is one of the most famous spies of WWI, Mata Hari.
What's interesting is that Mata Hari's tarnished reputation may not entirely be deserved.
She was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in the Netherlands,
and after a horribly failed marriage she moved to Paris to become a performer.
It did not go well for her at first. She just couldn't make it.
So she decided to change her act.
She changed her name to Mata Hari and became an exotic dancer.
Her dances were very suggestive for the time, and even for now as they would often end almost completely in the nude and she said
that they were descended from rituals given to her by priestesses of Indonesia.
That was definitely not true but it was a good story and she was really good at branding and she captivated Europe,
and had many of the most wealthy men of the time wrapped around her little finger,
And then WWI happened now.
Now this is a very simplified version of events but essentially while she traveled around Europe at the beginning of the war
she was approached by the Germans to be a spy,
and they paid her for doing so and she agreed or at least she took the money...
and then didn't really do much spying for them. Instead she went back to Paris and was hired as a spy by the French,
and paid a lot more for doing that. And she was actually quite good as a spy for the French
but she made enemies both with the French government who never really trusted her,
and with the German government who felt kind of shafted and rightly so.
So the Germans sent a coded message that outed Mata Hari as a spy,
and they used a code that they knew that the French had already cracked,
pretty sneaky.
Well the French took the bait and they arrested her as a spy.
And now during her trial they really couldn't come up with any hard evidence against her and she even said
"A harlot? Yes. But a traitor, never."
Unfortunately following a military disaster that led to the death of about 50,000 French soldiers
they needed a scapegoat and Mata Hari fit the bill.
The deaths were blamed on her and she was convicted and sentenced to death.
And on October 15 1917 she was put in
she was put in front of the firing squad.
But if there's anything redeeming about her execution
is that she showed up extremely well dressed
wearing "a neat Amazonian tailored suit, especially made for the occasion,
and a pair of new white gloves."
That may not be true but that's what was in the papers,
but she did die with dignity. The officer in charge of the firing squad actually said
"By God, this lady knows how to die."
Now the final character from The King's Man that I want to give you a little background on
is the one who eats the Bakewell tart.
Grigori Rasputin, born in 1869 a peasant from a village in Siberia.
Not at all the kind of guy that you would think would help lead to the fall of Imperial Russia,
but he did!
And it all started in 1897 when he had a religious awakening.
Now many say that he was a monk but actually he never had any official
role with the Russian Orthodox Church. Rather he was just kind of an itinerant zealot
who spent most of his time in St. Petersburg climbing the social ladder,
at the top of which he found Nicholas and Alexandra, the Emperor and Empress of Russia.
Now look at this guy, ratty beard greasy hair and eyes that
when they look at you you just feel dirty.
Not the kind of guy you'd expect to win over the hearts of Imperial Russia's power couple but that is exactly what he did.
See he passed himself off as a prophet and a healer,
one that could heal their son of hemophilia.
Now most considered him to be a charlatan but to give the devil his due, and some thought he was actually the devil, as well
Rasputin did stop the excessive bleeding of their son Alexei.
He claimed that he did it by performing a miracle but in actuality it was probably
that he stopped the legitimate doctors from giving the boy aspirin,
The last thing you give to a hemophiliac!
But whatever the reason was it worked and he was in like flynn, and his influence and control over the Imperial family grew
even as the church and most of the aristocracy hated him.
By most accounts he was pretty unpleasant it was said that
he would accept sexual favors and bribes for people to gain access to the Tsar.
Now most of those accounts are from his enemies so who really knows,
but what is known is that he became pretty darn chummy with the Empress Alexandra,
and they kept close tabs on the Tsar. One politician at the time said that the couple turned the Tsar's ministers
"into marionettes whose strings are in the grasp of Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra...
who has remained a German on the Russian throne, a stranger to the country and its people."
She was from Germany and never really liked and neither was Rasputin,
though actually the common people supposedly kind of thought of him as one of their own.
Which is probably why Rasputin was fairly confident when he prophesied that
should the royal family ever abandon him or should he die
that they would fall soon after.
Now there are numerous accounts of Rasputin's death most of which are grossly exaggerated,
but what's pretty certain is that Prince Felix Yusupov tried to poison him
unsuccessfully and then shot him, more successfully, successfully and then threw his body into a frozen river.
Also it turns out that Rasputin's prophecy
was kind of right because less than a year after he was murdered the October Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin
put an end to Imperial Russia.
A very sad time. Luckily I'm going to have a nice Bakewell tart to cheer me up.
So you'll know the tart is ready when the top loses its shine and just starts to brown.
Then take it out of the oven and let it cool completely, and when i say
completely I mean completely because if it is warm then the jam- well it's like lava.
So please be patient.
And here we are a Rasputanic Bakewell tart.
Yes I decided that the adjective form of Rasputin is Rasputinic.
Let's give it a shot.
Definitely a lot more um jam to
to almond ratio than a modern Bakewell tart but it smells really good. It looks pretty, and here we go.
Hm! Hm! Hm!
That's so good.
It is sweet cus of the jam.
Gonna have another bite.
But it almondy.
There's plenty of almond, you really get that.
Those are the two flavors that that you get it's very-
Christmasy! That's the word, it's very Christmasy.
It's really the perfect dessert for this time of year!
Also I'd really be interested to see how it is with different jams, you know strawberry jam
or boysenberry. I don't know, whatever goes good with almonds.
It's just the the top layer is very
smooth and and custard-like whereas a modern one it's frangipane which I find sometimes can be
a little too sweet and a little gritty.
Not this.
Now just as The King's Man i am a gentleman and so I ate my tart with a fork,
but Rasputin didn't so in honor of Rasputin here we go!
*wipes shame*
I can't believe I just did that.
It was kind of fun though.
So thank you to 20th Century Studios' The King's Man out in theaters December 22nd, make sure to go see it it's very very good
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
My face is going to be sticky all day.