Tart Off

My obsession with portuguese custard tarts has been explored on this blog before.  Since that date, I have been working on perfecting my product.  I've experimented with different combinations of cream, milk and buttermilk in the custard (a bit of buttermilk gives the custard a bit of lift, makes it a little sharper.  Although do you really want custard to be sharp?).  I've used cold custard to fill the shells and hot custard (we felt the hot custard had a creamier result, and you are more likely to get brown spots on the top when baking).  There has been blowtorching of cinnamon and sugar on the top.  And obviously, there has been a lot of custard made for birthday parties, morning tea, afternoon tea etc.  In sharing them with some friends, I have also passed the obsession on to others and my friend Huw has also become a custard tart baker (I'm so proud of him, he started with packet custard for his first attempt, but now he makes his own).

However the question of who makes the best still hadn't been resolved.  The Parliament House custard tarts had become a bit of a distant memory, I couldn't recall what I was trying to perfect.  But feedback from consumers told me that mine were pretty damn good.  Fortunately, we had another event at Parliament House coming up.  It seemed an opportunity too good to miss.  We put custard tarts on the menu for morning tea, primed up the other competitors (me and Huw, because not only is he a friend, he is also one of the AV suppliers I use for events) and the Tart Off was on.  Custard tarts were prepared the night before and brought into Parliament House (the security guard who scanned my bag thought I was bringing in scones).  The event over, guests departed, leaving the tasting panel and the tarts.  Sadly, no representative from the House could spare the time to participate, but we tried to be as objective as possible.

The first tart we tried was Huw's.  Excellent browning on the top, without scorching the pastry.  His custard was very smooth, but quite pale in colour.  He did admit to using crap supermarket eggs, having run out of good ones.  Pastry was quite thick, and not much crunch.  Admittedly it is hard to retain crunch on a tart that has been cooked the night before.  Huw's is the calorie friendly (!) tart because he makes his custard from milk only.  A lovely soft, smooth custard with a nice flavour, enjoyed by everyone.

The second tart came from the House.  It had a nice dusting of sugar and the custard had a lemony flavour and a good yellow colour.  The pastry was nicely flaky on the sides, but a bit thick and chewy on the bottom.  Compared to Huw's, the custard was slightly grainy.

Tart three, obviously was mine.  I had packed a cold brick in the bag with them, and they had therefore stayed quite cold, which did make it difficult to appreciate the full flavour of the tart.  However, we didn't have time to wait for them to come to room temperature, so we carried on.  The pastry had some crunch and was a good colour on the sides and the bottom.  The blowtorched cinnamon and sugar on the top rated well - we thought mine looked the best of the three and the cinnamon on the top enhanced the flavour.  The custard wasn't as smooth as Huw's but was smoother than tart two and was a lovely yellow colour (thanks to Bronwen's beautiful eggs).

All participants felt that they hadn't produced their best work for the Tart Off - perhaps the pressure was a bit much.  We're not sure if the Parliament House chef knew he was participating in a tart off, but we agreed he hadn't done his best work either.  We didn't award prizes or places - it was just a good comparison.  Obviously, custard was the winner on the day.

You would think that now I could let it go.  I could move on to something else to perfect, like profiteroles or danish pastry or churros (acutally, I must try making churros one day).  But no.  What did I do today?

I just can't help myself.  But now I can play with flavours a bit more - these ones were infused with orange zest as well as lemon and it was delicious.  I also reduced the temperature of the oven a bit and.... I guess I'll just keep going, experimenting and freezing a lot of egg whites.  If you need to make meringues, let me know.

The search for the perfect portuguese custard tart

I've been making PCTs for a while now, courtesy of Bill Granger's quite achievable recipe.

Speaking as someone who has never had an affinity with custard, either cooking or eating it (dating back to a traumatic experience in primary school involving bananas, packet custard and a boy named Karl) I'm quite proud of my custard tarts.

I'm also becoming more fussy about the quality of the tarts I eat that are made by others.

So when I had an event recently at Parliament House, I took the opportunity to have PCTs on the menu for morning tea, knowing that the pastry chef at Parliament House is a pretty talented individual.

Firstly, a custard tart at 10.30am when you have been up since 4.30am, already run one event and are a good way into the second tastes pretty good.

The custard was good - a bit softer than mine with a nice flavour. A lovely dusting of powdered sugar and a little bit caramalised around the edges. The pastry wasn't very crisp. My kind banquets person on the day gave me a take home pack for the children and they loyally said they preferred mine. Time to compare.

A weekend batch of custard tarts resulted. I made the custard a bit looser than I usually do and infused a bit of mandarin peel in the custard. They came out of the oven looking pretty good and we took them around to share with Bronwen and Claire M.

Bronwen, not having tasted the Parliament House version was unable to compare. The girls and Claire M could compare. We seem to prefer my pastry and the Parliament House custard.

I'm going to keep working on this, since a good PCT is a fabulous thing. And with new chickens on the scene at Bronwen's place (welcome to Twitter and FaceChook) eggs are not something we are short of. I'll keep you posted on how I go.