CUSTARD TARTS

Old fashioned sweet pastry set vanilla custard tarts, these are one of my dad's favourite cakes, they are really simple to make and deliver a sumptuous rich creamy custard pudding in it's own sweet case.

I love that I can just wheel out in to the garden and down to the chicken house and collect fresh eggs when I need them and at the moment my hens are laying too many eggs which dad likes as I have to keep making more of these custard tarts! 

Prep time 10 mins / Pastry chill time 30 mins / Cooking time 30 minutes

It is one of my jobs to collect the hens eggs with my dad, I am sure it's so dad can hint he wants more cakes ! 

  

I have different breeds of chickens that lay all different colour eggs, Amelia and Earhart are my home breed cream legbars that lay blue eggs, then black bob a black sussex lays dark brown speckled eggs, my two home breed large white sussex lay perfect peach coloured eggs and finally my skylines lay almost white eggs and one of them does lay a blue egg, they are a cross of cream leg bars.

How do I know this...I got dad to collect the eggs every time one was layed, this was easy as my chickens like to shout about the fact the just layed an egg, so we were able to collect the eggs with the proud chicken shouting about it.

 

Ingredients

(Makes 4)

Sweet Pastry

350g flour

100g icing sugar

150g soft butter

2 eggs beaten

1 pinch sea salt

Custard Filling

5 egg yolks

70g caster sugar

333ml double cream 

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

1/4 tsp grated nutmeg

First make the sweet pastry, place the butter and icing sugar in a large bowl and suing your fingers mash together, next add the egg yolk and mix in, add the salt to the flour and then add to the mix and using your fingers in a pecking action, (tap your fingers to your thumb, and see how that looks like a pecking motion now do that incorporating the butter mix in to the flour).  Once you have a pastry ball, flatten a bit, wrap in parchment paper and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Take your pastry out, divide into four balls, roll out in to circles and line your tart tins with the pastry, line the pastry with a piece of baking paper and fill with baking beans, pop in the pre-heated oven for 10 minutes, then remove the baking beans and paper and cook for a further 5 minutes, remove from the oven and turn the oven down to 120 C / 240 F.

Place the egg yolks in a large jug, add the sugar and whisk until light and fluffy and pale in colour, stir in the vanilla and cream, pour in to your pastry cases, grate a little nutmeg over the top and pop bake in the oven to bake for Approx 20-25 minutes until there is a set wobble in the center.  Remove leave to cool if you can before eating!