This Sunday may I present to you my Manchester Tart….

I’m doing a spot of recipe writing for something which I can tell you more about in April, and this is the happy and rather delicious result of one of those recipes.

My Grandma taught me how to cook, she was a school cook and a pastry chef, so this, the famous Manchester Tart was one of her favourite things to make. I followed her handwritten recipe in a rather battered handwritten book and this was the delicious outcome.

If you’ve never had Manchester Tart before, it is shortcrust pastry blind baked, smothered with a layer of raspberry jam, topped with creme patissiere and sprinkled with toasted dessicated coconut. Some recipes (some very wrong recipes IMHO) include a layer of sliced banana on top of the jam, and most use much more coconut than I did, but it’s all personal taste.

Regardless of whether you are pro or anti banana, this Manchester Tart was a fine tribute to my Grandma, and I like to think she’d be tucking into seconds right now if she were still with us.