Galette des Rois and Mixed berries Custard Tart

This is simply a photo round of my galette des rois and custard mixed berry fruit tart.

I have been making Galette des Rois over several years now for the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. I especially like it- I mean who doesn't like flaky pastry and sweet almond filling. I personally cannot wait to bake it around that special day. I have posted my recipe here.

As for the custard fruit tart, this was quite simple to assemble. Firstly I fully baked a semi-sweet shortcrust pastry tart. Then I cooked some custard (using custard powder). Once cooled, I whipped up some cream until stiff peak and fold it into the custard. The result is a light and creamy 'custardy' filling perfect for my tart. I covered my cooled tart base with some melted chocolate. After it has firmed up, I poured the filling and then topped it up with some frozen berries. I did not take care to defrost them- my mistake. If I ever do it again, I would used fresh berries as the frozen berries released a lot of water into my filling which did not set the filling as expected. Anyway, you learn from your mistakes. Otherwise the tart was delicious and thanks to the chocolate film, the base remained super crunchy.

Post New Year Dinner Celebration

I know, it feels like the New Year has long been gone, right? Well, I shall still post on what we had at my uncle's place after the New Year. We had a really nice dinner- good food and plenty of desserts. For once a year, it is worth it. So for dinner, we had soy chicken and vermicelli veggie tofu  stirfry (both made by my aunt) and beef bean stirfry (made by me). As for dessert, I made a mixed berries custard tart, and a galette des rois (to celebrate Epiphany of the Lord). We also had some brownie cheesecake. A great start to the year.

Galette des Rois/ King Cake

For Epiphany I made the traditional galette des rois. Normally a bean is place in the cake, so that whoever finds it in his share is crowned king for the year. A tradition you will understand by the birth of Jesus Christ when the three kings went their way to find him accompanied with gifts. It is basically a cake-ish dessert made with puff pastry and almond filling. It is really delicious. You have that crunchiness on the outside and the sweet almond filling in the inside: great combo. Have a look here at the photo below and for the recipe click here  (it's a step by step process, very easy to follow).