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. 

Chocolate Tarts

I decided to make chocolate tarts as they would provide a little bitesize piece of flavour and I like chocolate!! The recipe I used to these was found in a book called Scones, Muffins and Teatime Treats.  

I made the pastry the night before, so I had less to do on the day, though the recipe says it only needs around 20mins in the fridge to cool. The pastry consists of plain flour, custard powder, butter, egg yolk and water. I used margarine instead of butter, as always! 

First step was to combine the margarine and the flour together:

Flour and marg crumbling together

As you can see from this picture my machine wasn't very good at combining the mixture using the aluminum blade and left a lot of flour around the outside. Using a spatula this was easily mixed in. Once that was done the liquids were added and the mixture combined to a nice pastry. 

Combined pastry

I then wrapped the pastry in cling film and left it in the fridge overnight, along with the other varieties of pastry I made. 

Pastry in the fridge

When we were ready to get started the next day I set my mum the task of making the pastry cases. This was a case of rolling out the pastry in flour and then cutting with a small cutter. We were using a cupcake tin to bake these so she used around 8cm cutter to achieve the right size cases. Once they were cut she placed them in the tin (first sprayed with oil so they don't stick) and they were ready for filling. Unusually the pastry wasn't baked blind in this recipe. 

Pastry cases all cut and ready to be filled

For the filling I combined cream cheese and sugar (in the mixer) until they were nice and creamy. Then added in egg and melted chocolate, finally adding ground almonds. This was all combined together till it was a solid colour, no streaks, and was smooth and then spooned into the pastry cases.Each case contained around 2 teaspoons of mixture. 

Cases filled and baking

These were baked in the oven, the recipe suggested 15mins but as usual they required longer than the recipe said and ended up having around 30mins in total. This was when they had just started to firm up under touch. 

Chocolate tarts cooling

They were left to cool and then drizzled with white chocolate, placed in the fridge so the chocolate could set. 

Drizzled chocolate Tarts

To serve the tarts I placed them on a 2 tiered stand. 

Cakes plated and ready to be eaten

Verdict: I gave these tarts 8/10, they were very rich and had a lovely intense chocolate flavour, however, I did find it quite heavy and sticky making them difficult to eat. Gary gave the tarts 9/10 and his comment was they were very nice. I also had my mum as a guest judge for these, she gave them 9/10 saying that they were very chocolatey and lovely. Overall these tarts get a total of 26/30, a very good score. 

Honey and Almond Tarts

 My latest Jo Wheatley challenge was the Honey and Almond Tarts from page 92. I wasn't overly keen on this idea as I don't like pastry but as it was pulled out of the hat, I gave it a shot. 

It was probably the most complicated of the recipes I've done to date but having said that it was very easy to create. 

The first step was to make some sweet pastry and leave this to chill. Once that was chilled I used a cutter to cut out circles and then placed these in a pre-sprayed muffin tin and left to chill for 15 more minutes. 

Pastry is chilling

Whilst that was on the go I heated up the butter, sugar and honey to boiling and then added some double cream and almonds. This mixture seemed to be mainly almonds with honey and not much else. I was expecting a spongy mixture. 

This was added to the pastries and then they were cooked for 20mins. 

Add the honey and almonds

Once cooled I made some lemon icing (icing sugar and lemon) and added this over the top. 

The finished product, not too neat and tidy this time!

The verdict: Jo's description states "I think it's really great when you create different textures and tastes in a bake, and these little tarts do just that, with soft, short, crumbly pastry, then sticky honey and crunchy almonds, all topped off with tangy lemon icing. What's more, it's really simple". 

I agree that there were several different textures in these tarts and that the lemon icing certainly helped the tarts, however, I didn't really enjoy it. For me it was way too sweet and moist, I found it slightly sickingly sweet and since I don't like pastry anyway this didn't help. To be honest, the pastry section was actually my favourite bit of this so that's not great. My score is only a 6/10 this time. 

My husband however, for once, gives a higher score than me being 8/10, He thought the lemon complimented the nuts and pastry really well and it tasted really nice.

Contrasting views today then but bring the Honey and Almond Tarts to a total score of 14/20.