Rhubarb and Custard Tart

I won the lottery! Four numbers between four of us. Not quite the big time but heading in the right direction. My good friend Rachel has been managing our little syndicate for years now and every now and again some money will enter my account when we have a bit of cash to pay out. I have to do nothing, as my direct debit for my lines goes over automatically, so it make the small amounts feel like a little treat. Normally I do nothing about it but this time I thought I should get something with the money as I fancied treating myself. But what to get? Most of the shops a short distance from my work sell electronics or home ware. Therefore home ware was going to be the theme.  

This happily coincided with my thinking about what to bake this week. I bought some rhubarb last week but wasn’t feeling the whole rhubarbness so made caramel cupcakes. However it’s still in my fridge and pretty much begging me to do something with it. I love rhubarb and there were always a few plants at the end of the garden while growing up so it was used liberally. I don’t think it’s used enough as its slight tartness is welcome, even if you have to slather it in sugar to make it palatable. Surely that’s a plus? So I thought ‘rhubarb’, then I thought ‘custard’, but I don’t want a crumble – what about a tart?!!! 

So below is the culmination of my thought process, matched with winning the lottery and deciding to treat myself to a loose bottomed flan tin. My case split, and half the custard drained out while baking, but it rocked. I used a 25cm tin but you could use one slightly smaller, although I had custart left. It’s a really simple recipe and I’d say that you could use the custard as a base for any fruit tart that you like. Soft fruit would work well and I wouldn’t bother with roasting first. 

Ingredients

400g rhubarb

100g caster sugar

A vanilla pod if you have it but I chucked in some extract

350g short crust pastry (I used the ready roll but it just broke apart. I think the readymade block would be better and just roll it out yourself or buy a readymade tart case!)

75g soft butter

150g caster sugar

300ml double cream

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract 

1.    Preheat the oven to GM5/190°C.

2.    Chop up the rhubarb into chunks. About 3 - 4cm long and if it’s chunky cut in half lengthways. Cover with the caster sugar, drizzle on the vanilla extract, cover with foil and put in the oven for 15 minutes until soft. (Mine went completely mushy but it worked). Then leave it covered until you need it.

3.    If baking your case then roll out the pastry and line a buttered flan tin with it. Ideally loose bottomed but if you don’t mind prising the first bit out in a messy way then any tart style tin will do. Blind bake (so a large piece of baking paper down, cover with a load of lentils chucked on top to stop the pastry rising. Some people have specialist baking beads but screw that – lentils do) for 15 minutes then lift the baking paper out, with the lentils, and bake for about 7 minutes until the case is hard and starting to colour.

4.    If not baking your case, and you’ve bought one, then skip step 3 and feel smug.

5.    Turn the oven down to GM3/160°C. Put the soft butter (make sure it’s really soft), sugar, cream, eggs and vanilla in a bowl and whisk together. Custard done! See so simple.

6.     Drain the rhubarb, keeping the liquid as you could serve with some of this and cream. Fill half the case with custard, dot the fruit around, then fill the case with the rest of the custard. If you feel like it save some fruit to lay on top to look impressive. I didn’t do this!

7.    Bake for 35 minutes with a baking tray on the bottom of the oven to catch any stray custard.

8.    Fully cool before serving. 

N.B. You will have some pastry and possibly some custard left. So cut out rounds of the pastry, line a cup cake tin with them, adding the custard. Bake for 15 minutes and cool.