John Whaite's apple and custard tarts
Looking for a gorgeous treat that's so easy to make, you can rustle it up with the help of any little relatives keen to dabble in the kitchen with you? John's apple and custard tart recipe is just perfect.
Makes 12Prep: 15 minutesCook: 20 minutes
Ingredients:Oil, for greasing80g icing sugar, plus extra to dust320g ready-rolled all-butter puff pastry250g Bramley apple sauce5 large egg yolks80ml single cream
Method:
Preheat the oven to 220C/200C fan/gas mark 7 and grease a deep 12-hole muffin tray well
Dust the worktop rather liberally with icing sugar, then unroll the pastry onto it and sprinkle it with icing sugar. Roll the pastry back up tightly – you might need to wet the top edge with just a little water so it sticks and stays rolled. Slice into 12 even discs by cutting it in half, then cut each half in half, then cut those quarters into three chunky discs.
Stand a disc of pastry up on one of its at cut sides, then squash it down with the heel of your hand. With a rolling pin, roll it out into a disc big enough to tuck messily into the muffin tray. Press it into the tin, lining the muffin hole, and then repeat with the remaining portions of pastry until each hole of the tray is lined. If you’re working in a hot kitchen, it might be a good idea to keep the chunks of pastry in the fridge, then once all cavities in the tray are lined, pop them, tray and all, into the fridge for 10 minutes or so.
Divide the apple sauce between the pastry cases. To make the custard filling: Whisk together the icing sugar and egg yolks until the sugar dissolves, then whisk in the cream until combined. Pour the custard into the pastry cases – (it is easier to put the custard into a jug first then gently pour it over the apple sauce). Leave a millimeter or two of pastry clear at the top, as the custard will rise quite dramatically.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. The custard will darken on top and sprout up over the pastry – and please don’t worry if these look cracked, it’s all part of their charm. Remove the tarts immediately from the tin and set on a wire wrack to cool. Finish with an extra dusting of icing sugar.