If you didn’t grow up in Kent, in the south-eastern corner of the UK, or go on seaside holidays there, or if you haven’t made a pilgrimage to the famous Sportsman at Seasalter, or stopped for a pub lunch in the so-called Garden of England, you may have no idea what a Gypsy tart is. Though still found in bakeries and on menus across the county, this unapologetically sweet dessert remains a resolutely local speciality.
Chef Mark Sargeant recalls it being served up “every lunchtime” during his schooldays in Maidstone, yet, he observes sadly, “people who aren’t from our area never seem to have heard of it”. Kent-born food writer Rosie Birkett, whose new book The Joyful Home Cook is out in May, says: “It always felt like a real treat as kids. There was something utterly irresistible about the sweet, soft, moussey filling, often topped by completely unnecessary, but nicely crunchy, beige sprinkles.”
“Unnecessary” is a good word for Gypsy tart: no one needs a brown-sugar mousse in a buttery pastry case – but I bet you want one now, don’t you?
The pastry
Birkett explains that it wasn’t the sugar that troubled her as a child: “Given that we lived off Refresher bars and pink sugar shrimps from the tuck shop at school, the amount of sugar going on in these tarts never seemed outrageous at the time, but I always found the pastry a bit soft, flabby and insipid.” She’s working on a recipe with a nutty spelt pastry that she kindly sends me to try out, crunchy with chopped almonds and emphatically savoury from the spelt.
It’s quite different from all the others, which tend to be rich and biscuity – Stephen Harris’s recipe from the aforementioned Sportsman is so delicious that I’m tempted to bake the leftovers as shortbread. That said, given the aggressive sweetness of the filling, we all tend towards the plainer pastry used by Birkett and Gary Rhodes. Bake Off winner Jo Wheatley goes as far as adding lemon juice and zest to the recipe in her book Home Baking, giving her shortcrust a real tang – we’re divided as to whether this is a distraction or an improvement, but it’s certainly a clever idea.
Harris’s version calls for low-gluten flour, for which I use sponge flour, and he lines the tin with pastry discs, rather than rolling it out, to minimise gluten development. To be honest, not being a Michelin-style perfectionist, I’m not sure I can appreciate the difference, glorious as his pastry is – unlike the almonds in Birkett’s recipe, which highlight the contrast between crisp crust and wobbly filling. They’re not obligatory, but they are very welcome.
You’ll need to blind bake the tart case thoroughly, because the filling requires a very gentle hand with the heat – again, it’s nice to have some textural difference between the two elements of the dish.
The filling
This is refreshingly simple; the vast majority of Gypsy tart fillings contain just two ingredients: sugar and evaporated milk. Paul Hollywood gives a recipe containing condensed milk as well, which doesn’t seem to add much except for making it even sweeter, though I’d be interested to know if there’s a practical reason for it.
One of the secrets to success is to whip up the evaporated milk for longer than you might think feasible (Sargeant demands 20 minutes of hard graft), until it forms a thick, billowing mousse, and this will happen satisfactorily only if the milk is thoroughly chilled first. It’s like magic, but preferably performed with an electric whisk, unless you have muscles like Popeye’s.
The sugar element is traditionally dark muscovado, but I’m intrigued by Hollywood’s use of the light kind, and try using it, without the distraction of his condensed milk, in the recipe published in Kent Life magazine. Oddly, though I’m not a big fan of dark brown sugar, which can be rather intense, here the treacley, almost tangy flavour helps to balance the sweetness: the lighter sugar tastes one-dimensional in comparison.
Kent Life recommends the highest ratio of sugar to milk, 1:1, which proves pretty extreme in the dental department. Rhodes and Harris, meanwhile, go for one part sugar to 1.14 milk, Wheatley 1:1.2 and Sargeant 1:1.36, which means his tart tastes as much of the evaporated milk, with its distinctive, slightly sweet, almost metallic flavour, as the sugar. It’s still sweet, but not quite as overwhelmingly so as many of the others, especially with a good pinch of salt.
The cooking
The most difficult part of a Gypsy tart is the cooking: tales of woe abound under almost every recipe online, prompting me to wonder why I’ve chosen, of my own free will, to make six of the things in the first place, and then photograph the results for posterity. Yet, somewhat remarkably, all six turn out pretty well, with no disastrously liquid fillings to spoil my best tablecloth. This is not, I think, because I’m an amazing baker, but because I read one very useful piece of information before starting out: according to Good Housekeeping, “the trick is not to overbake the tart or the contents will liquefy”.
Somewhat counterintuitively (if a tart doesn’t look set, my instinct is to shove it back in the oven for another 10 minutes), Kent Life calls for a cooking time of just two to three minutes at 180C, but it yields a far lighter, fluffier result than Hollywood’s 30 minutes at 190C, which splits distressingly across the top. Sargeant tells me eight to 10 minutes at 180C is ideal, and Harris generously consults his pastry chef Kirstie, who recommends 20 minutes at a chilly 100C. Good Housekeeping knows its stuff: the best results come from the least intense cooking, either by whipping the tart in and out of the oven in the blink of the eye, or turning the temperature right down. The latter seems the safest option: the Sportsman tart is dreamy in its creamy lightness, like a cloud of sugary heaven.
The serving
You’ll need to allow the tart to cool completely before serving – and though Sargeant and Wheatley both give recipes for lemon cream to serve alongside, most Kent natives remember eating it with a sharp green apple at school. Which basically makes it a fruit salad.
Perfect Gypsy tart
Prep 25 min
Chill 60 min
Cook 45 min
Serves 6-8
For the pastry
50g almonds (optional)
300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 pinch salt
150g chilled butter, plus extra for greasing
1 egg yolk
For the filling
410ml evaporated milk, chilled
300g dark muscovado sugar
1 big pinch salt
To make the pastry, whizz the almonds, if using, to a rough rubble in a food processor or chop with a knife.
Mix in the flour, sugar and salt, then grate in the butter and rub in or whizz briefly to make crumbs. Mix in the egg yolk and just enough cold water (probably about two tablespoons) until it comes together into a dough, working it as little as possible. Flatten into a disc, wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes. Grease a deep, 25cm tart tin with butter.
Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and line the tin with it. Chill for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/gas 6.
Prick the base all over with a fork and line with baking paper or foil and baking beans. Bake for 20 minutes, remove the paper and beans, and bake for another five to 10 minutes, until golden and crisp.
Meanwhile, put the evaporated milk, sugar and salt in a food processor and whisk on high speed for 15 minutes, until thick and billowing. Once the pastry is ready, remove and turn down the oven to very low – 100C (80C fan), if you have a decent oven thermometer – and wait for it to cool down to temperature.
Pour the filling into the tart case and return it to the cooled oven for 20 minutes. Take out and leave to cool completely before cutting and serving.
• Gypsy tart: childhood favourite or queasy memory? And which other puzzlingly obscure regional specialities deserve to be better known elsewhere?
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