Delicious and creamy custard
Yum!!! Sweet treat
It’s coming up to that dreaded Christmas time, when we have to think about doing all those extra chores, buying presents, making Christmas cake (oh, tick,) Christmas mince pies and of course going to all those Christmas parties and lunches. It can be quite stressful all this extra multitasking on top of our busy lives. I’m taking the approach to try and do a little bit at time, tick off those present buying obligations while I’m already out doing something else, make the most of the sales. It does take the pressure off. It seems to be my philosophy in life actually, drip feed things to make them happen. It’s how I aspire to write a novel too, 750 words a day, that’s 2500/week, 10,000/month and a novel in a year! It’s amazing what you can achieve by drip feeding, anything, tidying the cupboards, reading, any thing you think you don’t have time for, you can do if you do a little bit a day. Well this bake didn’t go exactly like that. It sat on the bench unbaked for about 5 days, (while I drip-fed other things!) and by the time I went to bake, I had run out of eggs, usual story. But I did it finally last night around dinner time which might not have been a sensible time to bake but it seems to be the story lately. I prepared the pâte brisée, (which is just a fancy word for pastry) in a way I had never seen before, by sifting the flour and salt onto the clean bench. 
I put the hard butter between clingfilm and pounded it with a rolling pin until it was supple.
Then I cut the butter up and put this into a well in the flour, and added an egg yolk, water and sugar, then mushed it with my fingertips until it came together as a dough.
Quite fun, a bit like making pasta I’d imagine. 🙂
After leaving the pastry in the fridge to chill, I rolled it out into the pie dish and blind baked it. 
Meanwhile I made the pastry cream filling. I scraped the seeds from a vanilla pod into creamy milk and heated this until boiling. 
Then poured the hot milk over a mixture of whipped eggs, sugar and cornflour. This went straight back onto the heat and was stirred constantly until it thickened into a custard. 
I poured a third of this into the base of the pastry case and then placed apricot halves on top, 
and covered these with the remaining pastry cream. There was alot of pastry cream. 
I baked this in the oven for 30 minutes, then after sprinkling icing sugar on top,
baked it for another 30 minutes until the top had dark brown patches. 
This cooled tart went into the fridge and came out glossy and delicious the next day. It was eaten cold. 
I loved the apricot in it, giving it a delicious fresh taste.
