Disclaimer: Once you’ve made this Baked Custard Tart you’ll never want to buy one from the bakery again.
I do love the smells wafting from the local bakery and certainly indulge with fresh, crusty bread for our routine Sunday lunch, however, a home-made Baked Custard Tart is hard to poke a stick at. Rather than wobbly, overly-yellow custard made from a packet, this is the real deal and you’ll be rewarded with great taste, texture and many compliments from whomever you choose to share it with.
If you want to limit the preparation time on the day of indulgence, you can prepare the custard and the pastry a day beforehand. Baked custard literally is made by pouring the liquid directly into the pastry shell and it solidifies as it bakes. Unlike a bought Custard Slice, this tart doesn’t have a top pastry layer to ice so you have all the flavour but not the sickly sweet icing.
I’d highly recommend you use whole nutmeg and grate it (rather than powdered nutmeg) as it just smells and tastes wonderfully fresh.
Baked Custard Tart
Ingredients
- 1 x sheet of sweet pastry
- 1 1/2 cups of cream
- 1 cup of milk
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 3 eggs + 3 eggs divided into yolks (for the custard) and whites (for the pastry base)
- 40g caster sugar
- fresh nutmeg
Method
- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- Defrost the frozen sweet pastry sheet (unless you a making your own from scratch). Line the bottom of a fluted tart tin with baking paper (or grease it well with butter). Blind bake pastry for approx 20 minutes. You do this by placing a layer of baking paper OVER the pastry and hold it down with uncooked rice or dry beans. This way the pastry is weighted down and protected so it won’t rise and get pastry bubbles, nor get over crispy. In the process it makes the pastry strong so it doesn’t go soggy when you fill it with liquid.
- Remove from the oven, take off the ‘blind baking material’ and brush pastry with a little egg white. Place back the oven for a few minutes for the egg white to set. This helps seal the pastry (liquid-proofing it somewhat). Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the kitchen bench.
- In a saucepan, bring the cream, milk and vanilla paste to a boil.
- In a separate bowl whisk together eggs, egg yolks and sugar, then slowly add to the boiled milk mixture, whisking all the way! Remove quickly, pass through a sieve (this will capture any lumps) and chill in a bowl in the fridge. This will be absolute liquid. Don’t worry that it doesn’t resemble custard just yet!
- Reduce the oven temperature to 130°C.
- Once the custard liquid is cold, pour into the prepared tart case. Grate fresh nutmeg and bake for approx 10 minutes, then turn down to 100°C until the tart has set. This will take approximately 1 hour. Do check that it’s cooked by lightly pressing your finger in the centre. It will be firm and golden.
- Remove from the oven. Allow to settle and cool for about an hour, then devour!
