Serves 12
I’ve made a homemade shortcrust for the base but you could absolutely skip this step and buy yourself either ready-made pastry or even better, a ready-made tart shell.
Ingredients
Pastry
250g plain flour
130g unsalted butter, cold
Pinch of salt
1-2 tablespoons iced water
Honey Custard
720ml thickened cream
250g egg yolks
150g honey
1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste or seeds from 2 vanilla bean pods
Egg Wash
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon water
Creme fraiche, to serve
For the pastry case:
In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, add the flour and cubed cold butter and mix these ingredients together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add in the iced water (as much as is needed) until the mix comes together into a dough.
Turn the dough out of the bowl and bring it together into a ball with your hands. Flatten the ball of pastry out to a disc, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 1-2 hours (or overnight).
Once the pastry has chilled, remove it from the fridge and place it down onto a lightly floured surface. You may need to knead it slightly to bring it back to a pliable consistency and to ensure the temperature of the dough is even throughout. Roll it out to 2-3mm thick (just a guestimate works here, don’t go getting your ruler out!) before lining your tin.
Preheat the oven to 180C fan force.
Transfer the pastry into a 10in tart tin and press the pastry into the sides until they are totally flush with the tin. Trim away any excess pastry with a sharp knife before lining the tart shell with baking paper and filling with weights to blind bake.
Bake the tart shell for 10-15 minutes, and remove the baking paper and baking weights before returning to the oven and continue to bake for a further 15 minutes. You want a beautiful, even golden brown. If you find any little holes in your pastry case, fill them with some of the leftover pastry – if you don’t, the filling will leak out of the shell.
Finally, egg wash the tarts – mix together the yolk and water and evenly brush onto the tarts surface. The residual heat from baking will cook the yolk wash and seal the pastry.
Allow to cool completely before filling.
Reduce the oven temperature to 130c FF.
In a saucepan, gently warm the cream until just simmering. Meanwhile, combine the yolks, honey and vanilla and mix gently to combine. No need to aerate these as we don’t want any bubbles in the top of our tart.
Once the cream is simmering, temper the egg yolk mix with ⅓ of the cream mixture and give a good whisk to make sure its thoroughly combined before mixing through the remaining cream. Strain the custard mix to remove any lumps of cooked egg yolk. If you see any air bubbles on top of the custard, remove these with a spoon.
Pour into your prebaked tart shell and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes minutes, or until the outer edges of the tart have set, and the inside still gives a good wobble.
Allow the tart to cool completely before placing in the fridge for 1 hour to set up. Remove from the tart shell and serve – this one is best eaten the day its made. Serve with a lashing of creme fraiche – this offsets the sweetness of the honey perfectly