It’s the Easter weekend. And it’s sunny this morning. :) I am at church helping to organise our yearly Easter camp which stretches over from today until Monday. It’s a lot of work, printing booklets, writing devotionals, organising camp activities but it’s a huge consolation that the camp is accompanied by copious amounts of food for every meal! :)
Easter isn’t really about chocolate eggs (although I definitely wouldn’t say no!) or bank holidays or even spending time with family, but a time to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus and to think about what implications this may have for our lives.
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me , though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
John 11:25-26
Whilst my Twitter feed has been bombarded with posts about Easter eggs, chocolate, and lamb/bunny shaped iced biscuits my brother and I made Portuguese egg tarts. Egg= Easter right? :p I was skeptical as I have never made custard before (I know, shock horror) and I don’t really like working with puff pastry, home made or ready-made.
To my surprise they didn’t turn out half as bad as I expected, though I would have liked the custard to have caramelised a little more on top (this is where a blowtorch would come in handy).
Ingredients:
Butter, for greasing
3 free-range egg yolks
125g sugar
20g cornflour
2tsp vanilla essence
175ml full fat milk
225ml double cream
300g ready rolled puff pastry
Plain flour, for dusting
Icing sugar, for dusting
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180c. Grease the wells of a 12-hole muffin tray with butter.
2. In a pan, heat the cream and milk until simmering and immediately remove from the heat. Be careful not to let it boil.
3. In a bowl, whip together the egg yolks and sugar until thoroughly mixed and lighter in colour.
4. Pour a little of the hot cream and milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Repeat once more.
5. Then pour the egg yolks back into the pan and return to the heat. Add the vanilla and the corn flour.
6. Heat the custard, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until it begins to thicken. The custard is ready when it can coat the back of the spoon.
7. Roll out the puff pastry onto a clean work surface lightly dusted with flour and icing sugar. Cut the pastry in half and place one sheet on top of the other.
8. Roll the pastry sheets up like a Swiss roll and cut the roll into twelve slices. 
9. Lay each of the rolled pastry slices flat onto the work surface and roll out into 10cm disks using a rolling pin. 
10. Press each pastry disc into the wells of the prepared muffin tray.
11. Divide the cooled custard equally among the pastry cases. 
12. Transfer the muffin tray to the oven and bake the tarts for 20-25mins, or until the custard has set and is a pale golden brown and the party is crisp and golden-brown. Allow to cool in the tin. 
We used this recipe from the BBC Food website, with a few alterations, mainly to the custard-making method, which I found on Youtube, courtesy of Videojug. This method seemed more fail safe as a small amount of the hot milk and cream mixture is added to the egg yolks to regulate the temperature before the whole lot is mixed together (this helps to prevent the custard from curdling). And I also cut down on the amount of cornflour as 30g seemed A LOT as I was adding it in.
ALMOST ALWAYS HUNGRY 