My Grandmother’s Tarte aux Pralines Was Never Pink Enough, and That Was the Point

If you walk past any pastry shop in Lyon, you will see it in the window: a tart filled with something so pink it looks radioactive. This is the tarte aux pralines, made with pralines roses, almonds coated in bright pink sugar, melted down with cream into a sticky, glossy filling. Tourists photograph it. Lyonnais children grow up thinking it is a normal colour for food.

My grandmother made one every Sunday in winter, and hers was never as pink as the ones in the shops. It was more of a dusty rose, darker at the edges where it caramelised. When I was little I was a bit ashamed of this. Now I understand it was the whole point.

Why hers was different

The pink pralines you buy in Lyon are almonds coated in layers of cooked sugar coloured with red food colouring. The shops use a lot of them and very fresh cream, and they bake the tart quickly so the colour stays bright.

My grandmother used fewer pralines and more cream, and she let the filling cook down slowly in a pan before pouring it into the crust, until it began to turn amber. She said the bright pink ones tasted only of sugar. Hers tasted of caramel and almond, with a little salt. She did not care at all what it looked like.

The crust

She used a simple pâte sucrée, a sweet shortcrust. Two hundred grams of flour, one hundred grams of cold butter, seventy grams of icing sugar, a pinch of salt, and one egg. She rubbed the butter into the flour with her fingertips until it looked like sand, then added the sugar and the egg and pressed it together without kneading.

It rested in the cold pantry for an hour, wrapped in a tea towel. Then she rolled it out, lined a tart tin about twenty four centimetres across, pricked it with a fork, and baked it blind at 180 degrees for about twenty minutes, until golden.

The filling

This is how I make it now, following her method:

• Crush 250 grams of pink pralines roughly in a tea towel with a rolling pin. Some should become powder, some should stay in pieces.
• Put them in a heavy pan with 250 millilitres of double cream and a small pinch of salt.
• Cook on low heat, stirring often, for about fifteen minutes, until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has thickened and darkened slightly at the edges.
• Pour into the baked crust and let it set at room temperature for at least two hours. Do not refrigerate it, or it becomes hard.

It will not be shocking pink. It will be the colour of old roses. It will taste much better.

Sunday afternoons

The tart was always served at four o'clock, with coffee for the adults and hot chocolate for us. My grandfather would cut it, very thin slices because it is extremely rich, and my grandmother would say every single week, "It is not as pretty as the shop." It was a kind of ritual complaint. We all knew she was proud of it.

Making it for my own table

I work in a bookshop now and do not have Sundays free as often as I would like. But in December I always make at least one. Last year my flatmate, who is from Brittany, looked at it and said, "It is not as pink as the ones in the shop windows."

I said, "No. It is better." And I heard my grandmother's voice in mine.