Lemon Custard Tarts

After attempting a previous lemon custard tart recipe, seen here, and not thinking it was amazing I decided to try making one of my own combining a few recipes and experimenting a little. 

The first step was to decide what type of pastry I wanted to use. I've had really good comments about my puff pastry but it's quite time consuming so I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the day making it. The other option was sweet shortcrust pastry. I decided that I would do puff this time because I wanted the recipe to be as good as it could be. The recipe for the pastry can be found here. Of course you can use shopbought pastry as well, either puff or shortcrust. 

I rolled out the pastry and, using a 9cm cutter, cut out circles. The custard recipe will make around 12 tarts. These were placed in a muffin tin, covered in greaseproof paper and filled with beans. I baked these, blind, for 15minutes. 180oC. 

Meanwhile I made the custard filling. I decided to do this similar to a previous recipe as that worked really well. For vanilla custard tarts with a chocolate swirl look here. I needed to be careful that the mixture didn't curdle, lemon and milk is not usually a good mix. 

For my first attempt, which didn't work, I tried adding lemon juice and zest in with the milk and heating it. I then strained it and thickened to custard. This mixture seperated and tasted awful so I won't be attempting that again!! 

My second attempt, which did work, was the method I settled on:

Ingredients: 

90g Caster Sugar

3 Egg Yolks

1 tbsp cornflour

250ml Semi skimmed milk

Zest of 2 lemons

Place the zest and the milk in a saucepan and heat up until the milk is just boiling. 

Mix together the sugar, egg and cornflour until a smooth paste. 

Strain the milk through a sieve, to remove all the lemon zest, and place it back in the saucepan. 

Add the paste and whisk, heat gently always mixing. This will start to thicken up quite quickly, as soon as it does remove it from the heat and allow to cool slightly. 

Lemon Custard

Once your pastry cases are cool, remove the paper and beans. Fill with the custard mixture. Place back in the oven, 180oC, for 10minutes. 

Tarts in the muffin tin

Once done allow to cool and enjoy!! 

Ready to eat!

The verdict: I really enjoyed these tarts, and it's not just because I made them up!! I thought the lemon was strong enough to have a fresh flavour but not so strong that it was over powering and sharp. The tarts had a lovely sweetness to them. I could happily have eaten the whole batch. I'm still not overly keen on pastry so for me I would probably make a big tart so there's a large custard to pastry ratio, however, I'm sure others would disagree with me on that one. I give the recipe 10/10! Yummy!! 

Almond, Apple and Blackberry tart

I've skipped a few chapters in Annie Bell's Baking Bible and ended up choosing something from the tarts and pies chapter. The first recipe in this chapter is Apple and Almond Tart, I decided to alter it slightly and added some blackberries. 

First step is to make the pastry, Annie recommends doing this in a food processor so I used my mixer. Simply cream together butter and sugar. Mix in the egg and finally the flour and ground almonds. Mix till it forms a dough and then wrap and place in the fridge for several hours. 

Wrapped pastry ready for the fridge.

Once the dough is fully chilled roll it out and place in a flan dish. I found the dough didn't hold together at all and kept sticking to the side no matter how much flour I put down so I did this in stages. Rolled a section and placed in the dish. Then added more and more pushing it together with my fingers to form one piece.

Cover in greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans. Place in the oven for 20minutes. I did this stage for too long so my pastry has come out a little too crispy. 

For the filling mix together butter, sugar, ground almonds and plain flour. Add the eggs and mix together throughly. Place this in the cooled pastry case and top with sliced apple and blackberries. 

Place in the oven for 45 minutes, this is longer than the recipe stated but I found mine needed the extra time. The tart should be browned and spring back when touched. Leave to cool, slice and then enjoy!! 

Finished tart

The verdict: The pastry was really lovely, it melted in my mouth and tasted great, and I don't even like pastry!! The filling had quite a strong eggy flavour, I couldn't really taste the almonds and would have liked this to taste stronger. The fruit was really nicely cooked and softened. I enjoyed this enough to want more than my tiny piece (on a diet) and to consider making it again. Next time I'd consider putting in some almond essence to strengthen the flavour. 8/10. 

Chocolate Eclairs

I wanted to learn how to make choux pastry, which can be found here.  With this I decided to make chocolate eclairs. I found this recipe in the Mary Berry complete cookbook. 

Once the pastry was ready it was piped into long tubes. I don't have a large plain piping nozzle so mine have a little extra shaping! I also could do with a larger nozzle as these seem quite small. 

These were then cooked in the oven, starting at a higher temperature and then being reduced for the final few minutes. These were then left to cool on a rack. 

I then whipped up some double cream until it was thick. Sliced the eclairs in to and filled with the cream. 

Sliced and filled with cream

Warmed up some double cream until just under boiling point, I then added plain chocolate to this and stirred until melted. I left this to cool until it was thicker and then spooned on top of the eclairs. 

Eclairs smothered in chocolate

The eclairs were then left in the fridge overnight to set. 

My fridge is full!!

The verdict: I found this recipe fairly easy to follow but then there isn't much involved in the processes listed above. It was a very simple thing to make. I don't really like pastry or cream so I didn't really enjoy these. Apparently they are popular at Gary's work and people think they taste good. I wouldn't make these again but there is nothing wrong with the combinations itself. 

Outside view

A view inside, filled with cream. 

Choux Pastry

I've seen profiteroles and éclairs on various programs and decided it's about time I learnt how to make choux pastry. I found a recipe in Mary Berry's cookbook and followed that. 

Make sure the other ingredients are ready, here is the flour and the egg ready to add once it gets the right point. 

Flour and Egg

The first step is to add butter to water in a saucepan. 

Butter and Water

and heat it until the butter is melted. Bring this to the boil. 

Melted butter

Add the flour to the mix and beat until it forms a ball

Added flour and formed a ball

add the eggs little by little, beating between each amount. The mixture starts out like this:

Before the egg is beaten in

and when beaten it becomes a thick paste like this: 

A smooth paste after the egg is beaten in. 

This is then ready to use and is usually piped out into either balls or sticks. You'll have to wait and see what I made out of this pastry. 

Puff Pastry

I have a variety of recipes to make today but I wanted to break them down a little bit because I'm learning new techniques as well as trying out new recipes. The first technique I'm learning is puff pastry. Now I don't want to give away what I'm using this for.. yet.. so you'll just have to wait and see.

Ingredients:
150g Strong White Flour
150g Plain Flour
2 Eggs
100ml Cold Water
250g Butter

I've never made puff pastry before but I've always seen it on programs and thought it looked like an interesting idea, very unhealthy though!! But one of my recipes this week called for this technique so I thought it was about time I mastered it.

The first step is to mix the flour, egg and water together. I was surprised to see this kind of pastry uses both plain flour but also strong white flour as well. Just as well I have a 25KG bag in my cupboard for bread!! This is meant to form a stiff dough, mine was more of a sticky mess:

Sticky dough.

But I wasn't too worried as the next stage was to knead it all together for 10 minutes. By the end of the 10 minutes by dough looked completely different and much more what I'd expect.

Smooth and elastic dough

It was then placed in a bag and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to cool.

I bashed the butter, with a rolling pin until the block was a rectangle 1cm thick. This was the placed back in the fridge for an hour to harden.

Squashed butter

The pastry dough was then rolled out into a rectangle, also 1cm thickness. The size of the rectangle should be similar to that of the rolled butter, as you want the butter to go to the edges of the dough, 2/3 the size.

Place the butter on top of the dough on the bottom, it should be around 2/3 of the dough. Place as close to the edges as possible. Fold over the top 1/3 on top of the butter. Cut off the remaining butter and place on top of the folded edge. Fold over the bottom 1/3 on top of the butter. You now have a dough and butter sandwich.

Folded and wraped

Roll this into a rectangle again. Fold over the top 1/3 and then place the bottom 1/3 on top of this. Wrap this in cling film and then place in the fridge for an hour to chill.

Repeat this process 2 more times.

At this point the puff pastry is ready to use. 

Ready to use

This is a teaser of what I used the puff pastry for:

What are they? 

The verdict: I was very pleased at how my pastry rose and it looked like really good pastry. I'm not keen on pastry so I haven't tried it, as yet, but Gary says it tastes good. The recipe was very easy to use but it is a lengthy process taking several hours. I enjoyed making it and it's certainly something I'd consider making again rather than buying it. 

Lemon Tarts

I wanted a balance with my chocolate tarts and decided to create this by making some lemon tarts. This recipe was from the book Muffins, Scones and Teatime Treats. 

I made the pastry the day before to give myself less to do, the recipe doesn't state this is necessary stating it requires only 20mins in the fridge. 

The pastry is made by combining plain flour, salt, butter, caster sugar, lemon rind, egg yolk and water together. Start with just crumbling the flour and butter and then add the remaining ingredients together. I then wrapped this in cling film and placed it in the fridge overnight along with the other varieties of pastry I'd made that day. 

Pastry wrapped and in the fridge.

When we were ready to start the following day I commisioned my mum to make the pastry cases while I made the filing. To do this she carefully rolled out the pastry and cut them using 8cm round cutters. This was the right size to fit in a cupcake tin, which is what we used to bake them. She found that the pastry easily made 24 cases, in fact we ended up making 30 due to having left over pastry and filling. 

The pastry cases were pricked with a folk and then baked for 10mins, unusually they did only require this length of time to bake and therefore the timing was correct. 

To make the filling I combined cream cheese, sugar and egg yolks together until smooth. I then added lemon juice and condensed milk beating this until the whole mixture was well combined. 

Smooth, light mixture ready to be spooned into cases.

I filled the cases by adding 2 teaspoons of mixture to each one and then these were baked in the oven. The recipe stated they should be baked for 5 mins but we started off with 10 and this seemed to be the perfect length of time. 

These were served on a 2 tiered cake stand.

Lemon tarts ready to be eaten

Verdict: I gave the tarts 7/10, I thought that the filling was really nice and light, however, it didn't taste strongly enough of lemon. The first taste I got was condensed milk and then the lingering after taste was lemon. I wanted to be hit a little more strongly. Gary also gave the tarts 7/10 stating that they were nice and refreshing, however, more lemon was needed. I also got my mum to guest mark these and she gave them 8/10 stating that they were creamy and smooth, her favourite so far but they were nothing special. Overall these tarts received a mark of 22/10, they were OK but definitely didn't create a wow. 

I have to apologise for the lack of pictures of this recipe, I forgot to take many as I was carrying out the various steps!! 

Quiche Lorraine

I have made mini quiche Lorraines in the past, however, not for many years and therefore no longer remember which recipe I used to use. So I did a quick search online and found a recipe on the BBC Good Food Website. 

I made the pastry the night before, just to save me a task, the recipe doesn't even state to place it in the fridge at all but I've always been told to cool pastry before rolling (prevent shrinkage) and I wanted to try and minimise tasks on the day. 

To make the pastry I mixed together flour and margarine until a breadcrumb like mixture and then added water to bring the mixture together. This was then wrapped in pastry and placed in the fridge overnight. 

When ready to make the quiches I got my mum to roll out the icing and cut them out using an 8cm cutter which is the correct size for a cupcake tin. I wanted to make mini bitesize quiches, I suspect the recipe is for larger quiches, however, it doesn't state this anywhere. 

Pastry cases ready to be filled

While mum was doing that I prepared the filling. I combined the milk and egg in a jug and then added the cheese. I then fried the bacon, onion and tomatoes. No where on the recipe does it say to chop these up but since I clearly wasn't going to get 1 rasher into 24 cases I guessed this step was missing. Gary chopped up the onion and the tomatoes into little pieces for me and I cubed up the bacon. I ended up using double quantity of onion and bacon to ensure there was enough mixture for all the cases and to balance out with the tomato. 

Filled with the fried ingredients

Close up view of the case with filling, no liquid added yet

Once this was fried I then spooned this into the pastry cases (which don't need prebaking) and carefully poured the liquid mixture on top. I found this quite tricky as the cheese and egg made it come out in chunks. If I was to make these again I would grate the cheese up more finely, which I think would help. 

The quiches were then baked in the oven for around 30 minutes until the tops were golden brown and they were nice and firm. 

Mini Quiches are cooling

I served this in a butterfly basket 3 tiered stand having had a night in the fridge. 

Stand in the left, bottom layer, contains the quiches ready to eat. 

Verdict: I really enjoyed these and have happily finished off the extras we had. The balance of the filling was good making them not too eggy but certainly not dry and I like them being that small size. For me I would give them 9/10. Gary gave them 8/10 and stated he would have preferred them warm but they were much nicer than the store bought equivalent  I would agree with this, I'm not usually a fan of quiche and wouldn't choose it but homemade is completely different and so easy. No excuse not to make them!! 

Chocolate and Coffee Flan

This recipe is an old favourite of mine, one that I've revisited over the years, that I love. It's from an old book that my mum used at school, I really enjoy browsing through it and finding all the changes she made to the recipes. My favourite is instead of Chelsea buns, my mum has changed them to Palace buns!! Always makes me smile!! 

Anyway, last week while my mum visited we purchased some baking beans so I've been pondering what recipe to use for their first outing to the oven. I then had the brainwave whilst at my parents over the weekend, I dug out this book and there was the recipe, Chocolate and Coffee flan. What I also like about this recipe is it uses ingredients that I always have so I can make it whenever it takes my fancy!!

The first step is to make the pastry base, this just involves mixing flour and butter to breadcrumbs and then adding a little water so it makes a dough. I placed this in the fridge for around 30 minutes and then rolled it out and placed it in the flan dish. Covered it with greaseproof paper and then filled with my new beans and baked for 20 minutes. 

Pastry case ready to go in the oven

Once that was done I prepared the mixture for inside the tart. Cornflour, cocoa and coffee are added to a small quantity of milk and mixed to a paste. Meanwhile the remaining milk is heating to boiling, take off the heat and mix in the paste, back on the heat till boiling and the mixture will start to thicken. At this point add some sugar to the mixture and stir it in, the mixture will continue to thicken and turn glossy. 

Chocolate and coffee mixture, thickening up nicely

Then pour this mixture into the flan dish and leave to cool. As it cools it will continue to thicken up and then it's ready. 

Mixture poured in and cooling down

The recipe states that you can decorate the top with nuts or chocolate but I personally find this unnecessary, it gets eaten pretty quickly anyway, so just leave it looking lovely and rich dark chocolate. Yummy!!

Me and my husband are not great fans of coffee, in fact neither of us like it, but adding it to this recipe adds a nice bitterness to the sweet chocolate. I don't find the flavour too strong and I like the balance. If I was making it purely for him I would omit the coffee all together.