Week 14 - Gypsy Tart

No Quote from book but description from Wikipedia  A gypsy tart is a type of pie made with evaporated milk and muscovado sugar and pie crust. It originates from the County of Kent. The tart is extremely sweet and is, for many people, associated with school dinners.
Faff Factor =8

Bake = 9

Keeping Up Appearances = 9

Total score = 26/30

Yeah,, I made pastry.  Congratulations I hear you say and about blooming time.  I have been watching Eric Lanlard's Baking Mad programme on Channel 4 recently and was really happy to see his twist on the good old fashioned Gypsy Tart so without further a do I decided this was to be my pastry bake.  And oh my, did this bring back memories of my childhood and school days as it's the only thing my mum could bake so I grew up on the ever so sweet pastry dessert.    However, I mixed it up a bit and like a good little girl I made Mary Berry's sweet shortcrust pastry whilst using Rachel Allen's method of rolling out between two pieces of clingfilm and then Eric Lanards bake.  Ooh hark at me being creative in the kitchen.  

Back to the pastry, it was easy peasy and would recomend anyone to knock up a batch instead of buying the pre-packed stuff (which I will admit of buying just the once). As I do not have a food processor I made my pastry by hand, rubbing in the cold butter to make breadcrumbs then adding a yolk and splash of cold water. It was delicious, short enough to crumble and sweet enough to accompany the tart, so that's why I have given it a score of 9. 

The amount of filling was enough to make 2 10" tarts so I knocked up another batch of pastry and baked one for my mum - and the second batch was just as easy and good as the first.

Personally, it was way too sweet for me.  I used dark muscovado sugar which gave it a really dense sweet flavour, my mum though uses just ordinary soft brown sugar so next time I will give it a go using this and hope it will taste more to my palette.

Phew, I am so happy to give shortcrust pastry a go and will put the lemon tart on my list to bake in the summer, so once again watch this space.

Hope you all are having a good time whatever you may be doing.

TTFN

Lynetta Xx