Strawberry Custard Tarts

It was twin playgroup time again and I was tossing up between making either this or cookie pops. After a rather hectic week and not really wanting to load the twins into the car and drag them (or rather them drag me) through the shops for 1 item I made these tarts. Always fun to make and certainly a winner among the kids. They just love anything with strawberry in it. Also the price of strawberries are coming back down again so I had several punnets just looking fat and sweet calling at me "eat me, eat me". You only have to tell me once.

The recipe that I used is from Taste.com.au with a little tweak. I doubled the custard ingredients as the original recipe only made enough custard for 12 mini store bought pastry cases and I wanted more. Also I made my own tart cases. I did not make the pastry from scratch but by all means if you can please do. I used ready made shortcrust pastry and also some dark chocolate shortcrust pastry. Here's a thing I learnt from using the chocolate pastry - taste SO crazily yummy as is without baking. All the remnants from the cut outs ... ate them :)

Strawberry Custard Tarts
3 sheets shortcrust pastry (I used 2 normal, 1 chocolate just because I could)
4 egg yolks
4 tablespoons caster sugar
2/3 cups thickened cream
strawberry jam
1 punnet strawberries

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Cut out pastry and shape into muffin trays. I made 24 minis and 6 large muffin size ones.
3. Dock the pastry by piercing it with a fork several times so that it doesn't rise and get too puffy or you won't have room for lots of custard.
4. Bake in oven for 10 minutes, set aside to cool and start on custard.
*** pastry will shrink a little when baked so when you cut out pastry to make tart cases do not cut out pieces that are too small ***
5. Whisk yolks and sugar until all sugar is dissolved. Then add cream and mix. Don't whisk too much or the final product will be bubbly and not smooth.
6. Put a small dollop of jam on the base of each tart and add a piece of strawberry. How big the piece of fruit is up to you and also it has to fit the size of tart.
7. Pour custard into tart case around the strawberry and try not to overfill.
8. Bake for approx 15 minutes until custard is set.