Mango Custard Tart

SP and I made deliciously juicy mango custard tarts using this Fruit Tart recipe. The tart includes defrosted frozen mango, sliced and layered onto a light custard cream that is enrobed by a sweet buttery crust. The above tart was decorated by me (with the aid of a spoon, because the mango was surprisingly slippery!). The tart below was decorated by the SP, the Super Pastry-making-guy.



Notes on the Method:

• With the same amount of dough and cream, instead of one tart, we ended up with two generous tarts that were smaller - 6 to 7 inches in diameter?
• As I didn't feel like washing my rolling pin, we just pushed chunks of dough into the pans and flattened them with our fingers. This worked pretty well, though the edges should probably get more dough next time. The holes in the bottom need to be larger and more numerous so that there is less puffing of the pastry. Also, we only froze the flattened-out tart shells for about 20-30 minutes (while we made the custard cream), so there was no prechilling of the dough.
• The dough, when done, really does clump up into a ball when stirring with a spoon (or for the other folk, a mixing blade)!
• We used fat-free milk for the custard cream even though the recipe specified fat/low-fat. I don't think that it matters, taste-wise.
• A lot of the ingredients were NOT dutifully measured, but everything turned out fine!
• We replaced the corn starch with three tbsp of white flour in the cream. I think this is what gave the custard a more doughy/floury/pudding texture as opposed to a light pastry cream texture. Either way, it was still not too heavy (not like egg tarts at all!), had the viscosity of chocolate mousse, and paired well with the crust. Before incorporation of the heated milk, the egg yolk mixture had the consistency of pancake batter. On the heat, after merely a few minutes, the cream started to thicken!
• The only fruit we used was mango. Fortunately, mango is really shiny, meaning that there is no need for an apricot jam glaze!

Thickening custard on the heat!

Shells - baked, and filled with custard.

I am pleased with this tart because I can now successfully gauge when custard is "ready", and so can SP! This is a skill that will help him woo the women (far far far in the future)! Also, we had heaps of frustrating fun decorating with irregularly-shaped mango slices. The best end to the day was, of course, sharing a whole tart and watching the Q&A video on Curiosity's second day on Mars. 

Changes I would make include substituting whole wheat flour for the white flour, using two egg yolks instead of three, and adding more corn starch & milk. I would also make the give the sides of the tart thicker crusts so that they don't burn as much, and I would poke more holes into the crust to let air out (so the dough doesn't puff up).