When I was a child, Christmas Eve dinner was held at the home of my motherly grandmother: Irene.
The dessert for the adults was strudel, which I always hated, while for the grandchildren, Granny made this custard tart. For me this is the Christmas dessert!

Grandma Irene's tart

  • Preparation time: 60 minutes +pastry resting
  • Ingredients for a 7 7⁄8 inch or 20 cm cake tin
  • Difficulty: Average difficulty recipe

  • Ingredients
  • For the pastry:
  • 9 oz or 250 gr of pastry flour
  • 4 oz or 100 gr of icing sugar
  • 4 oz or 100 gr of butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • For the custard:
  • ½ US quarto or ½ l of whole milk
  • 4 ½ oz or 120 gr of sugar
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 1 ½ oz or 40 gr of cake flour
  • 1 lemon peel
  • For decoration:
  • peeled almonds to taste
  • icing sugar to taste
  1. Instructions
  2. Prepare the pastry. In a bowl, whisk the butter with the icing sugar. Add the egg and then the flour and salt. Stir quickly. Roll up the mixture and cover it with cellophane. Put it to rest in the refrigerator for at least two hours, preferably twelve.
  3. Prepare the custard. Boil the milk with the lemon peel in a small saucepan. In another small saucepan beat the egg yolks with the sugar then add the flour. Combine the milk with the lemon peel. Cook over heat until the cream thickens while continuing to turn.
  4. When the cream is ready, place the saucepan inside a pan full of ice to cool the cream quickly.
  5. Spread half of the short crust pastry between two sheets of baking paper. Spread the other half of the pastry between two other sheets of baking paper. Leave them in the refrigerator for about ten minutes to make them cold again.
    In a 7 7⁄8 inch or 20 cm buttered and floured cake tin, place one pastry disk. Prick the base with a fork. Place
  6. the custard and decorate with a shortcrust pastry grid made from the other pastry disk. Add some almonds into each grid.
  7. Bake in a hot oven at 325°F for about thirty minutes.
  8. When the cake is cold, dust with sifted icing sugar.

Tips to ensure the success of the dish:

  • The flour for the pastry is a weak one with a maximum of 8% protein. This will ensure that you do not develop a gelatinous dough. For this same reason, the dough should be hardly worked.
  • The most appropriate cream for baking in the oven is the one with few proteins which therefore will not have excessive development during cooking and consequently a subsequent relapse. In this case, it would be better to use 2 whole eggs but the recipe I have is that of my grandmother (though weighing all the ingredients because she only used a spoon) and therefore it cannot be changed.
  • The baking time will vary because each oven cooks differently. The pastry should not darken too much.

 before a Christmas Eve dinner