Custard Slice

Custard Slice is my Mum’s favourite thing to buy at the bakery. So, I popped around to her place after work and snuck some of this into her fridge for her (and Dad, and my ‘should really be moving out of home soon’ brother) to find once she got home. I found it surprisingly easy to make at home, it looks fiddly and complicated, but trust me, it’s not. The custard slice is delicious and is just as good as a store bought one (if not better because it was made at home with love – cheesy much?!)

Ingredients:
2 sheets frozen butter puff pastry, partially thawed
1 ⅓ cup caster sugar
1 cup cornflour
¾ cup vanilla custard powder
4 ½ cups milk
75g butter, chopped
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Passionfruit Icing:
2 ½ cup icing sugar
10g butter
½ cup passionfruit pulp or sauce

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200˚C. Grease and line a 6 cm deep, 20 cm cake tin, extending the paper 3cm above the edges of the pan.

Line two baking trays with baking paper. Place 1 sheet of pastry on each tray. Bake one tray at a time for 8 – 10 minutes or until golden and puffed. Carefully flatten the pastry (using an oven mitt is a good idea – it’s hot!). Set aside to cool.

Place the sugar, cornflour, custard powder and 1 cup of milk, in a heavy-based sauce pan over a medium heat. Gradually stir in the rest of the milk until smooth and combined. Add the butter. Cook, stirring constantly for 8 to 10 minutes or until the mixture simmers and thickens. Remove from the heat and stir in the egg yolks and vanilla.

Trim the pastry sheets to fit the baking tin. Place one pastry sheet in the bottom of the tin. Pour the hot custard over the pastry. Top with the remaining pastry sheet. Set aside for 30 minutes top cool.

To make the passionfruit icing, place the sugar, butter and passionfruit in a heat proof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir over the heat until smooth and combined. Refrigerate for four hours or until cold. Cut into squares before serving.

China used in photographs c/o The Vintage Table.

Passionfruit Custard Pots

As I mentioned in the Fran’s Fantastic Fudge post, a couple of weekends ago Simon and I went down to Taranaki for a visit and ended up leaving with a whole lot of food.  We were given heaps of passionfruit.  Simon made passionfruit curd but we still had some leftover, so we made these delicious passionfruit custards to use up the rest.

Serves 4.

1 cup milk
1 cup cream
3 eggs
1 egg yolk, extra
⅓ cup caster sugar
½ cup passionfruit pulp (approximately 4 passionfruit)

Preheat the oven to 160°C.  Place the milk and cream in a saucepan over a low heat and heat until hot, but not boiling.  Place the eggs, yolk and sugar in a bowl and whisk until pale (however, we had been given fresh eggs and they had super yellow yolks – they seemed to become more florescent in colour the more I whisked!).  Slowly whisk the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture.  Strain the mixture back into the saucepan then add the passionfruit pulp.  Return to the heat and stir over a low heat for approximately three minutes or until the mixture has thickened slightly.
Pour the mixture into 4 x ¾ cup capacity ramekins or heatproof dishes and place in a baking dish.  Fill the baking dish with enough hot water to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins.  Bake for 20 minutes or until the custards are just set.  Remove from the baking dish and refrigerate for 2-3 hours or until cold before serving.