Chocolate Custard Tarts

I set about finding a custard recipe as I had left over egg yolks from the macaroons. I found this recipe on.. yep you guessed it.. the BBC food website. It can be found here. And this is the recipe I made the puff pastry for.

Once I'd made the puff pastry the next step was to roll it out and cut it to size. This recipe was for muffin size tarts to I cut the pastry using a 9cm cutter and placed these in a muffin tin. I then filled then with greaseproof paper and baking beans. This was then baked blind in the oven for 15 minutes. 

Pastry in the oven. 

Meanwhile I made the custard. Mix the egg yolks, sugar and cornflower in a bowl until it's a smooth paste. Set this to one side. Heat up the milk, with the vanilla pod and cinnamon stick, until boiling. Remove from the heat and add to the egg mix through a sieve. Mix this together and return to the heat. Stir continuously until the mixture is thick. 

Heat up the cream until about to boil. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate. Stir until melted and leave to cool slightly. 

Pour the custard into the cooled pastry cases. Add some chocolate into the centre and swirl in slightly. Cook the tarts in the oven for a further 10 minutes. 

Cooked tarts

The verdict: I really enjoyed these tarts, I thought the pastry was much better than shop bought and the custard also tasted really good. I could taste a subtle hint of cinnamon but fortunately Gary, who doesn't like cinnamon, couldn't. The cases rose slightly too much in the oven, the beans weren't heavy enough, so there wasn't as much custard as there could have been. This is a shame as more custard would have been nice. The chocolate mix was also a little thin, due to not using real chocolate, so next time I'd make that with real chocolate. The recipe was really easy to follow and I felt like I knew what I was doing through every step. I would certainly recommend these and I will be making them again. In fact I have left over pastry so most likely it'll be sooner rather than later. I give these 8/10.