I had a few friends over for dinner on Monday night and got an unexpected present from Nikosia, ” The Art of Pastry” cookbook. Really nice present, I hope it will genuinely get me off my arse and make my own pastry more often. I did tonight.

From 125g flour,20g ground almonds, 15g icing sugar, 75g buter, an egg yolk and a bit of cold water I made a pastry and blind baked it for about 15 minutes, trimmed when it cooled and patted myself on the back. 🙂

THE CUSTARD WORKED AS WELL!!!!! 2 egg yolks,150 ml fat milk,25g of icing sugar and some vanilla paste, as well as a tea spoon of…potato flour ( didn’t have any cornstarch as the recipe required). I’ve beaten the eggs with sugar, vanilla and flour and then poured very warm milk while still beating it, then transferred back into the pan and heated up slowly until it thickened. Patted myself on the back again, jumped twice and left it to cool.

I filled my tartlets with some berries, which I first defrosted and heated up with some honey, topped it up with custard and chilled for 3 hours. The book recommends caramelising the icing sugar on top right before serving, but icing sugar doesn’t really do the magic like caster sugar…! Not to worry, 2 more tartlets in the fridge.