Strawberry Tartlets

BBC 2 has been at it again. This time indulging his sweet tooth, and I think inspired by the Great British Bake Off’s desert episode from last week! But I must say, even though I am more savoury than sweet, these were totally delicious. Scoffed them down!

Also hope to post another of Ms. Jenny’s recipes later, just need to check something with Milton and come up with an alternate Anglo-style recipe for it.

Pastry
5 ½ oz plain flour
½ oz icing sugar
3 oz cold unsalted butter diced
3 to 4 tablespoons of ice cold water

Method
Put the flour and icing sugar into a food processor and pulse for a moment, then add the cold diced butter and pulse again until you have a fine bread crumbs like mixture. Then with the processor running at low speed add the ice cold water a tablespoon at a time until the mixture comes together as a ball of dough. You may not need all the water, so add the last spoon slowly. Flatten the dough out and wrap in cling film and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Butter 6 (3in/7cm) tartlet tins, roll out the pastry on a floured surface to about 1/8 inch thick, line the tins and with a fork prick the bottom evenly to prevent the cases from rising, return to the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Pre heat your oven to 190c (170c fan).

Place the tart cases in the middle of the oven and cook for 10 minutes until golden, remove to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from casing and place on a wire rack to go cold.

To make the custard filling:
5 fl oz Milk
2 ½ fl oz of double or whipping cream
2 large egg yolks
1 oz caster sugar
1 tablespoon of corn flour
½ a vanilla pod

For decoration:
Sliced strawberries
2 tablespoons of strawberry jam

Method
Put the milk, cream and split vanilla pod into a medium pan and heat, in a heatproof bowl whisk the egg yolks, cornflower and sugar until smooth about a minute or two. When the milk is hot remove the vanilla pod (scrapping out all the seeds out into the milk mixture) then slowly pour into the egg mixture whisking until combined, then return the mixture to the pan and place back on the heat. Whisking constantly until the mixture comes to the boil and starts to thicken, then return to the heatproof bowl and place clingfilm onto the custard to stop a skin forming and allow to cool.

Once both pastry cases and custard are cold, spoon the cold custard filling into the pastry cases and decorate with sliced strawberries.

Then, in a microwave proof bowl, heat the strawberry jam with a little water to thin it for ten seconds or so and paint over the top of the strawberries to give a glazed effect.

Tip: make sure butter and water are cold, not room temperature!

Apologies for the poor quality photo😉