Apple and Custard Tart Recipe

Most definitely not a weight watchers recipe I'm afraid - this was a weekend treat and I have to say, I was very proud of it. I went out determined not to spend more than £5 on ingredients in order to do some baking, both to keep me occupied and to serve as a tasty supper during some Call of Duty action!! The result was yummy.

Apple and Custard Tart

I did skimp a little on my pastry, which I wouldn't do next time - all butter puff pastry is better but they didn't have it in the shop so mine was made with margarine :s. I already had sugar and a vanilla pod in the cupboard, but the rest of the ingredients cost less than £5 (and I still have enough ingredients left to make another pie so it probably only cost around £2.50 really).

Ingredients (serves 8)

4 cox apples
1 sheet of ready rolled puff pastry (you probably won't need all of this)
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
50g caster sugar (plus a little extra for sprinkling)
1 batch of custard (see below)
Double cream (whipped to soft peaks) to serve

Preheat your oven to 200°C.

Custard
For the custard, I did make my own - but not with my own recipe. I googled "extra thick custard recipe" and found this recipe, so credit goes to jarichaust.

The ingredients are milk, eggs, sugar, cornflour and vanilla (I substituted a vanilla pod for the vanilla essence though).

Method
1. Core your apples (or, if like me you do not own a corer, cut into quarters and just remove the middle) then slice them up into thin, even wedges.

2. As you chop, add the apples to a bowl containing the lemon juice and just swish them around a little to coat them - this will stop the apple slices from going brown.

3. Add the sugar to the apples and leave them to marinate for a little while.

Apple slices in sugar and lemon

3. In the meantime, make your custard (mix your eggs, sugar and vanilla and add part of the milk containing the cornflour, heat the rest of the milk gently and then combine it all together, heat until it gets really really thick and then allow to cool.). Alternatively, you could probably use ready made custard, it will just result in a wetter tart overall.

Custard ingredients

4. Lay some grease proof paper on a baking tray and then cut your ready rolled pastry to cover it (leave at least an inch of paper at the side so it's easy to remove later).

5. Spread the custard (which should be completely cool) over the pastry leaving a border of around 2cm (see picture below) and then lay your apples out over the custard in one layer, in whatever pattern you like. Sprinkle the apples with a little caster sugar (there will probably be a fair amount of 'syrup' left in your bowl from the marinating - you could pour this over the tart before serving if you wanted).

Apple and Custard Tart

6. Put the tart in the fridge to cool. I just did this for around 5 minutes or so, to make sure the pastry wasn't too warm before going into the oven. Once cooled, place in a preheated oven for around 25 minutes, or until the apples have started to caremelise and the pastry has puffed up around the edges. I would advise checking on the tart after around 20 minutes as your oven may work better than mine.

7. Remove from the oven, slice into pieces, serve with whipped cream (or more custard) and enjoy :)