Although I live on an island, its hard to find a beachfront restaurant (outside of a hotel) in San Juan due to urbanization as well as construction restrictions.  I adore and respect everything about the ocean and can’t imagine a nicer way to celebrate a special occasion than with lunch or dinner on the beach with your closest friends.  The smell of the salty sea mist, the strong untamed breeze, the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, the beautiful birds looking for their prey.  Oh! How blessed I am to live on a tropical island!  I remember as a naive teenager in the 1980’s, my father coming back from a business trip in the United States Midwest and telling me he had met someone that had NEVER seen the ocean!  To me, in my limited and ignorant world view, that was unthinkable! Something that I took for granted, that I could see everyday and that surrounds every piece of land on Earth!  It was not a unique natural wonder like the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil or the Victoria Falls in Africa, not even winter snow in Colorado…. just the ocean.  I guess this is all relative on where you live and what your scope of the world has been your first thirteen years of life, but later on, I found out the same reality was not far away from my own family.  My grandfather, eldest of five children, told me he took his youngest brother, 18 years his junior, to the beach at age ten for the first time. You see, my grandparents moved in with my great-grandmother and her youngest son, as newlyweds for a short period of time.  My great-grandmother lived a modest life on a rural hilltop in Ponce, south of Puerto Rico, during the 1940’s.  Her life revolved around her young son and close neighborhood and she had no need to go downtown near the coast. During those days, people seldom had cars and Puerto Rico was more of an agricultural than industrial society. So when my grandparents moved in with them and found out that his little brother had never gone to the beach, he immediately took him to see the ocean.  Imagine, living on an island and never having gone to the beach!!! Its a funny story because my grandmother tells me he would follow the water as it receded and run like a maniac towards them when the waves started to brake on shore as if a monster was after him!  A mix of excitement and terror took over him. I guess this experience was for him like it was to me seeing snow for the first time on a trip to Vermont, at the age of 9… unforgettable.

Over fifteen years ago, before getting married and having children, my closest friends and I started a tradition (and still do) to go out to lunch for each of our birthdays.  Its a reminder to stop the whirlwind in which we all live because of work, family and other responsibilities, and see each other at least every few months. There are birthdays in February,  March, April, August, October and our traditional Holiday dinner in December in one of our homes (coming up next Friday) to which I will bring this dessert. In those days, sometimes we chose a nice (although expensive) beachfront restaurant on Ocean Park Beach in San Juan for the gathering.  They had a different chef which made a heavenly and luscious apple tart as dessert and we would order it a la mode with dulce de leche ice cream and, of course, a candle for the birthday girl to make a wish.  It had a flaky pie-tart crust, almond cream filling and sliced apples on top. Eventually, the restaurant changed cooks and the apple tart has not been on the menu for many years. However, I had a mission of trying to replicate that tart’s combination of  flavors and I think I have done it with this recipe, which I served for Thanksgiving with outstanding reviews. It can also be cut into small apple-almond tart squares easily.

Hope you enjoy it!

Apple-Almond Tart with Apricot Glaze

Ingredients

Almond Cream (Frangipane)

1 1/4 cups ground almonds (I ground whole almonds in a food processor, you may roast whole almonds for a few minutes in the oven) or almond meal

1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons of sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp pure almond extract

Crust

8 phyllo dough sheets, thawed

8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

about half a cup of sugar

3 Gala apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced (I place the whole peeled apples in a bowl filled with cold water and throw in a squeezed half lemon so that they don’t turn brown while I butter the phyllo sheets. Then I slice them and place them over the almond cream spread.)

Glaze

1/2 cup apricot preserves

3 tbsp water

Procedure

1.  Preheat oven 350ºF.  Make almond cream by mixing all ingredients with a spatula.  Set aside.

2.  Thaw phyllo dough sheets according to manufacturer instructions.  Take out of box, unfold and place in a large tray.  Cover with damp cloth.

3.  Carefully place first phyllo dough sheet on jelly roll pan or cookie sheet with raised edges.  Brush generously with melted butter and sprinkle with a scant tablespoon of sugar.  Add second sheet, brush with butter and sprinkle with sugar.  Continue doing same procedure until you have used all 8 sheets.

4.  Spread almond cream in center of  phyllo dough leaving about 1 inch of border.

5.  Start placing thinly sliced apples (about 1/4 inch thick) simulating a fan and covering all almond cream.

6.  Bake 350ºF for 40 minutes.

7.  Meanwhile prepare glaze in a small saucepan and brush over cooked apple-almond tart.  Set aside and serve at room temperature alone or with ice cream scoop.