Toffee and dried fruit custard tart

Baking in lockdown has been a challenge and a balm; ingredients have not always been readily available, but the joy of immersing oneself in the tactile joy of making pastry, the olfactory bliss of toffee and the sheer concentration in note taking, blocking out interference in the brain from the clamour of coronavirus news is unrivalled.
It has also been a time for seeing what we have in the cupboard and working out ways to use up stored ingredients.
This is an elaboration, a variation, dare I say, an improvement of a recipe my mother used to make when I was a child.  It is, without a shadow of a doubt, an indulgence, but it is easy to make and right now, we all deserve a treat.

Pastry
150g plain flour
60g cold butter, cubed
Cold water

Filling
30g butter
120g brown sugar
2 eggs
200ml double cream
120g dried fruit*

Preheat the oven to 175ºC

Make the pastry; rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Bind together with just enough water to make a stiff dough.
Roll out on a floured board to fit either a 10" prospector pan, which is all I had to hand in lockdown, or a 10" pie dish, I should be getting one of these back in the Netherton kitchen any day now.  
Place in the fridge while you make the filling.


* I keep a jam jar full of dried fruit; raisins, currants, sultanas, dried citrus peel, soaking in sherry in the cupboard and used some of these for this dish, but booze free fruit is quite acceptable.

Put the butter into a saucepan (our copper pans are perfect for this) or a milk pan and melt over a gentle heat.  Stir in the brown sugar and the fruit.  Beat the eggs and cream together and add to the fruit mix.  Pour all of this into the pastry case and pop it into the oven.
Cook for 30 minutes until the filling has just set - a little wibble is a good thing, it will firm up as it cools.

Cool and serve in small slices; it is pretty rich and you can easily get 8-10 slices from this size of pie.

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