For this week’s Great blogger’s bake off I wanted to try something a bit different, so I decided to have a go at the technical bake from this week’s Great British Bake Off, Custard tarts. I found the recipe for the custard on the Great British Bake Off website here, and used my own pastry recipe as I was also making Summer Fruit Meringue Pies from the same batch.
Things that went a bit wrong:
- I forgot to mix the egg yolk and sugar first in my first attempt at the custard so had to start again as I had lots of tiny bits of egg floating in the milk
- I didn’t have a large enough circle cutter so had to use the lid of the tin my star shaped cookie cutters live in
- I couldn’t for the life of me get the circles to fit neatly in the tin without pinching off an excess
Things that went well:
- The custard cooked evenly and had a nice texture
- I only made a 7th of the amount on the website so ended up with a manageable 4 tarts to
eatgive to people - Using a silicone cupcake tray removes all of the issues that the bakers in this week’s show experienced getting the tarts out of the tins.
The recipe for my sweet pastry is as follows:
125g Plain flour
15g Castor sugar
75g Unsalted butter
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon of cold water
If you have a blender (which I don’t), just put all the ingredients in and mix. Otherwise place the flour and in a bowl and mix through before rubbing the butter in to create a breadcrumb effect. Next beat the egg yolk and mix through with your hands or a wooden spoon. Add the water and combine the dough into a ball. Knead briefly to ensure the egg yolk has distributed evenly throughout the pastry (no yellow bits).
Wrap the pastry in cling film and place in the fridge to rest for half an hour.
Once the pastry has rested (you could make the custard while you wait) cut out circles large enough to fill the moulds in your cupcake tray. butter the moulds and carefully position the pastry, mine were a bit unsuccessful, I think the sides of my tray are too steep meaning I have to remove part of the circle to make them fit.
For the custard (remember I made a 7th of the BBC recipe, I also added vanilla):
1 egg yolk
13g castor sugar
100ml whole milk
splash of vanilla essence
- Preheat the oven to 200c
- beat the egg yolk and sugar together
- heat the milk in a microwave for 25 seconds
- Pour the milk over the egg mix and whisk until bubbly and a nice even colour
- Place in a jug and pour into the pastry cases
- Cook in a preheated oven at 200c for ten minutes
- Reduce the heat to 180c and continue to cook for another 10 minutes
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin before taking the tarts out. (I used a silicone tray so didn’t have the issues the GBBO bakes did with removing the tarts.
Linking up to The crazy kitchen and Mummy Mishaps
thats a great tip re: using silcone bake ware to make the tarts be removed easily. they could have done with those in the GBBO! your custard looks like it set well and i would never have known that your pastry tarts had a soggy bottom! thanks for linking up x
Your custard looks perfect – definitely a lot better than most of the GBBO entrants’ efforts!
these look great too…so much better than GBBO ones. I was surprised that no one blind baked the tarts as I thought that would have solved the soggy bottoms? I love how you add your tips on what went well & what didn’t !
Ooh well done. I made these too and was a nightmare. Wish I had thought to use silicone.
I was also surprised that blind baking wasn’t mentioned this week. Yours look very very neat – they look a bit like Pastel Nata. I wish I’d made mini ones as it looks much more manageable. Ah well….onwards to the tuilles!
Thanks 🙂 I did think about blind baking but decided not to as the initial high temp is supposed to stop soggy bottoms. I think the problem was that after I’d poured the custard in I had left over pastry and custard so made an extra one at the last minute. I’m convinced that if I’d put them in as soon as I poured them the bottoms would have been fine. Guess that’s a good excuse to try them again sometime?