Oh my goodness what little pieces of sweet gorgeous richness. I loved DH mags 2010 Spring book because it was all yellow and butterflies. I loved the location section and I loved the honey section. It was just too good. However, I failed miserably to actually make anything from it until this month.
The honey custard tarts were a bit fiddly and I never usually make things like this cause they just don’t work for me but they are so incredibly cute and so very yummy that it was worth the fiddles.
First thing you need to know is that these are tiny! So you need to be a bit careful and patient. You’ll find them on page 174, issue 53, Sweet as Spring.
So what you need for the pastry is, short crust pastry. This was fun for me because I was actually able to get some! Yay, so it was nice not to have to make it from scratch this time. You blind bake these little guys, I had to use some muffin tin but that worked fine only problem was that I didn’t use enough weights on a few of them and they just turned out flat pastry’s so I couldn’t use it for the custard.
Next to make custard you mix together cream (I used yoghurt) and milk.
Beat together eggs, egg yolk, sugar, honey and vanilla then pour in the cream/yoghurt and milk.
Next is the fiddly part, you have to pour the custard into the pastry cases without over filing the cases and spilling custard all over the baking dish. Of course I did this, but not to worry it wasn’t too much of a disaster.
After they are once again baked until the custard is set you cool them down all the way.
To make the meringue mix eggwhites, vinegar and super fine castor sugar. I happened to have some icing sugar that a friend brought me so I used that instead. Worked like a charm whip it all up and then pop it into a piping bag to put on top of the custard. This is the fun part you can make it look like whatever you want to. I think the concept though was to make them look like beehives.
Now comes the tricky part, putting them under a grill until the meringue goes light brown. Don’t whatever you do, copy me and just walk away. (grrr) I was so mad at myself! The next thing I new I was smelling burnt meringue. Luckily I had plenty of extra meringue to play with and was able to fix it up so they looked ok and still tasted amazing!
So there you have it! Yummy, tiny, soft, cushions of delight.
