As it’s still apple time, I thought I’d give you one more receipe with apples.

It’s a bit of a cheat’s receipe as instead of making the tarts fully from scratch, you can use ready made puff pastry – the one that comes rolled up and can be found in fridge sections of most supermarkets these days.

You still have to make the custard but as they say, every little helps…

For 12 tarts you will need:

• 1 pack/roll of ready-made puff pastry (the ones from the fridge section)
• 250g apples
• 5 tbsps lemon juice
• 2 tbsps butter
• 150g plus 3 extra tbsps sugar
• 250ml milk
• 1 vanilla pod, split and seeds scraped out
• 1 tbsp flour plus a little extra to roll the pastry out on
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 egg plus 3 egg yolks
• 100g almond flakes
• 2 tbsps icing sugar
• a 12-hole muffin tray
• margarine/ butter/oil for greasing
• baking parchment

Take the pastry out of the fridge and let it rest at room temperature for about 10 minutes, in which time you can prepare your muffin tray: lightly grease the wells of the tray, then cut out 12 strips of about 4x12cms, from the baking parchment and line each hole with one strip (this helps getting the tarts out later).

Roll out the puff pastry, to take the paper out that it’s rolled up with, then roll it up again and cut into 12 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece out to a flat circle of about 11cms in diameter. Lightly press these puff pasty circles into the wells of the muffin tray.

For the apple filling, peel and core your apples and cut them into small pieces.

In a pan heat the lemon juice, butter and the 3 tbsp of sugar until the sugar dissolves, then add the apple pieces and soften them for about 3-4 minutes over a low heat. Then tip the apple pieces into a sieve set over a bowl, so you can save the syrup for later, and divide the apple pieces between the 12 puff pastry lined muffin wells.

Now is the right moment to preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
To make the custard, bring the milk and the vanilla seeds to the boil. Mix the flour, 150g sugar and salt and add this mix to the milk on the stove, continuously stirring it in with a whisk. Bring everything back to the boil, then take it off the heat and let the mix cool down a little before you whisk in the egg and egg yolks (otherwise you will get a scrambled egg custard).

Pour the custard over the apples and bake the tarts for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven.

For the finishing touch, mix the almonds with the left over apple syrup and top the tarts with them before letting them cool down.
Dust with icing sugar before serving!