I’m a big fan of Great British Bake Off (GBBO) and Custard Tart is something they’ve made before that I’ve always wanted to try. It feels a bit like a fall treat, especially with the nutmeg so I added it to my to-bake list. I should have used a recipe from one of my GBBO cookbooks, but when I was researching recipes somehow I didn’t even think about it. This recipe is one that was actually used for the Queen of England’s official 80th birthday lunch.

I started with the pastry dough and got everything mixed together and then poured it out onto some plastic wrap, wrapped it, then popped it in the fridge. It was pretty crumbling in some places but I’ve also learned not to mess with it yet as I’ve panicked in the past, added too much liquid, then it’s too wet when I go to roll it out.

I’ll go ahead and admit that I cheated a little and pressed the pastry crust into the tart pan rather than trying to roll it out and then press it in. I’ve done that with previous tart recipes and it seemed to work well and so I hoped it wouldn’t create issues later. Once I had the foil and some rice over the crust I let it bake for 10 minutes. When I pulled it out it wasn’t done so I let it go another 10 minutes. The butter really pooled up in the bottom of the crust but there wasn’t much else I could do at this point.

While my crust was baking I made the custard and that wasn’t too difficult. Be sure to pour the hot cream slowly into the egg/sugar mixture to temper the eggs and avoid scrambling them. The custard was done around the same time as the crust so I poured it into the crust and hoped for the best.

You might have noticed, I haven’t mentioned anything about the nutmeg. Nutmeg is very strong and 2 WHOLE nutmegs is an enormous amount. We opted to skip putting it in the custard and grated a little fresh nutmeg on top when it came out of the oven.

This is a fairly time intensive recipe and while there are some difficult elements it isn’t impossible. I ranked this a little lower visually as I felt like my crust was a little rough around the edges, but otherwise I was quite pleased with how it turned out. It has a very nice custard taste and while I’m glad I didn’t use the full amount of nutmeg in the recipe, it felt a little bland. I also noticed my crust was very thick and I actually think I could have halved the recipe and still had enough. It was just way too thick so the ratio of crust to custard wasn’t what I suspect is correct. The crust also had a little bit of a “soggy bottom” as they say on GBBO and this is likely because the butter pooled up on top. With all that in mind though it’s not super sweet and was quite light and enjoyable. I’d probably find another recipe to try, but I’d definitely make a version of this again.

Baking Ease	8
Time Spent	8
Taste	8
Visual	9

Recipe Used: Marcus Wareing