Cherry and Almond Frangipane Galette

There is a particular kind of pudding that rewards confidence over precision, and the galette is its patron saint. Where a proper tart demands a tin, blind baking and a neatly crimped edge, a galette asks only that you roll out some pastry, pile filling in the middle and fold the edges up however they happen to fall. The rougher it looks, the more charming it is. This one pairs cherries with frangipane, the soft almond cream that turns up under fruit in French bakeries everywhere, and the small clever twist is a good slug of almond extract that makes the cherries taste somehow more like themselves.

1 What a galette actually is

In France the word galette covers a confusing range of things, from the buckwheat pancakes of Brittany to the puff-pastry kings’-cake eaten at Epiphany. The version we mean here, a free-form fruit tart on a single round of pastry, is closer to what an American baker might call a crostata, borrowed in turn from rustic Italian baking. The unifying idea is humility: this is the tart you make when you do not own a fluted tin, or cannot face the fuss of one. It began as country baking, a way to use a glut of summer fruit without ceremony, and that lack of ceremony is exactly why it has survived. A galette that slumps a little, leaks a little juice and browns unevenly still looks beautiful, because nobody expected it to look perfect.

Cherries and almonds belong together for botanical reasons as much as culinary ones, since the cherry is a stone fruit closely related to the almond and the two share aromatic compounds. Crack a cherry stone and it smells faintly of marzipan. Baking them together is simply leaning into a kinship that already exists.

2 Making the galette

Start with the pastry, because it needs a proper rest. Keep everything cold and handle it as little as possible, leaving a few visible flecks of butter in the dough, since these melt in the oven and create flaky layers. Rest it for at least an hour so the gluten relaxes and the pastry rolls without springing back or shrinking.

The frangipane comes together in one bowl: beat softened butter with sugar, then the egg, ground almonds, a spoon of flour and the almond extract. Spread it across the rolled pastry, but keep a generous bare border, because that is what you fold up to make the rim. Pile the halved cherries on top, then fold the border up and over in loose pleats, leaving the middle open so the fruit shows and the juices can bubble. Brush the pastry with beaten egg for shine, throw on flaked almonds and a good sprinkle of demerara for crunch, then bake hot until the base is properly cooked through. The single most common galette failure is a soggy bottom, so do not pull it out early; you want a deep golden, almost biscuity underside.

3 Tips, swaps and getting ahead

If you are using frozen cherries, thaw them and drain off the liquid thoroughly, or the galette will weep. A spoonful of ground almonds or fine semolina scattered over the frangipane before the fruit acts as a sponge for any stray juice and protects the pastry. Fresh cherries in high summer need nothing more than stoning; out of season, frozen are honestly excellent here and far less work.

The pastry can be made up to three days ahead, or frozen for a month, and the frangipane keeps a couple of days in the fridge. You can even assemble the whole galette, freeze it solid on the tray, then bake from frozen with an extra ten minutes or so, which makes it a brilliant thing to have waiting for guests. Cherries are the obvious filling but the same template welcomes apricots, plums, blackberries or sliced pears, and the frangipane base means almost any fruit will taste as though it was meant to be there.

If the pastry tears as you fold it, do not panic; a galette is meant to look hand-built, and a small patch of overlapping pastry or a damp finger pressed along a crack will hold everything together. Should juice escape and catch on the tray, it caramelises into chewy, jammy bits that are honestly some of the best parts. The most important things are a properly chilled dough and a hot oven, so that the base sets and browns before the fruit can soak it. Serve it warm with cold cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and accept the compliments for something that asked almost nothing of you.