Created by Jenny Morris
If I had been in the Garden of Eden with Adam, I would have found a luscious, sticky-sweet fig far more tempting than an apple. I love eating figs just as they are, but when my fig tree is groaning with fruit I use them a lot in sweet and savoury dishes, and end up making jam and preserves too. The best!
Ingredients
- ------- Ingredients for the pastry --------
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
- 90g chilled butter, cut into little blocks
- 1 tablespoon castor sugar
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- a little iced water
- 60g white chocolate, melted
- ------- Ingredients for the filling -------
- 2 tablespoons cornflour
- 3 egg yolks
- 400ml milk
- 1 vanilla pod, split
- 100g white chocolate, melted
- 125ml whipped cream
- 12 figs, thinly sliced
- ------- Ingredients for the glaze -------
- zest and juice of 1 lemon
- 3 tablespoons raspberry jam
- white chocolate curls, for garnishing
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200˚C. Grease six 10cm loose-bottom tartlet tins.
- To make the pastry, place the flour and butter into a bowl and rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Stir in the castor sugar, orange zest and just enough iced water to bring the mixture together into a ball.
- Cover the pastry with cling wrap and place in the fridge for one hour to chill.
- Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out onto a lightly floured surface to a thickness of 5mm.
- Line the tartlet tins with the pastry.
- Fill with baking beans and bake blind for 15 minutes, then remove the beans and bake for a further five minutes or until the bases are golden brown.
- Cool in the tin before removing so that the pastry does not break. Once cooled completely, you can slide the pastry shells gently from the tins.
- Brush the inside of the shells with the melted white chocolate. Apply two coats to ‘waterproof’ the bases. Chill the shells between each coating of chocolate to make sure that it is set properly.
- To prepare the filling, place the cornflour and egg yolks into a bowl and mix well together.
- Heat the milk in a saucepan with the vanilla pod – don’t let it boil.
- Remove the vanilla pod and pour the milk over the egg yolk mixture, stirring all the time until well combined.
- Stir in the 100g melted chocolate and return the mixture to the saucepan. Keep whisking the mixture over a low heat until it has thickened.
- Remove from the heat and cover the surface with cling wrap while it cools down to prevent a skin from forming on the surface.
- Once it has cooled, chill in the fridge until cold and then fold in the whipped cream.
- Fill the pastry shells with the custard cream, and top with fig slices.
- Warm the glaze ingredients together in a small saucepan and gently paint the figs with the mixture.
- Scatter with some white chocolate curls and serve.
