Fruit Tarts

Photo: Liz

Ingredients

Pastry

1/4 pound cold butter chopped into pieces

1 1/4 cups flour

2 tablespoons sugar

3 egg yolks

Custard

2 egg yolks

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

1 cup full fat milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Topping

3/4 cup apricot jam

various fresh fruits (if using oranges make sure to take the skins off completel

Preparation

Using fingertips or a mixer, rub butter into flour until the mixture looks like coarse meal, stir in the sugar and egg yolks, and press the mixture together to form a ball. Refrigerate in plastic wrap for 30 min. Set oven to 375F.

Roll pastry between two sheets of wax paper making the pastry large enough to cover the base and sides of a buttered tart pan (9 inches) trim the edges and place a piece of foil into the pastry and fill with pie weights or baking beans. Alternatively you can make individual pastries doing the same. Bake 20-25 minutes, remove foil and beans, bake 5 minutes. Allow pastry to cool.

For the custard, whisk eggs in a bowl with sugar, and flour until the mixture is thick and pale. Heat milk in a saucepan until almost boiling, then remove from heat. Slowly pour the milk in with the egg mixture while whisking. Return the custard to the saucepan and cook over medium to low heat until thick ( custard will coat the back of a spoon- about 5-7min). Place a piece of plastic wrap right onto the surface of the custard to prevent skin formation and allow to cool in the refrigerator completely.

Spoon custard into the pie shell(s) and smooth it out with a spoon. Place your pieces of fruit over the tart completely covering the custard.

For a glaze, heat apricot jam to between 225F-228F, you can use a candy thermometer to measure the temperature. Then and brush over the top of the fruit to set the tart. (Alternatively you can add gelatin to the apricot jam to help the jam harden). Allow to cool completely.