Mini Dark Cherry Tarts

I thought I said I'm not baking myself a cake today ?? Hey, this is not a cake !
I just have to bake something for myself.

I spent 2 hours making pastry, moulding them, cooking the pastry cream & garnishing them with fruits. Everything was done at 3pm, thereafter I took a 1 1/2 hrs nap. At 5pm, I was having my coffee with the mini fruit tarts.

The pastry cream recipe is adapted from Kevin Chai's A Touch Of Classic Baking.

Ingredients :
500ml Milk
5 Egg yolks
10g Cornflour
40g Plain flour
120g Caster sugar
2 Tbsp Rum

To cook the pastry cream, combine milk, egg yolks, cornflour, flour & sugar in a saucepan. Stir continuously over low heat until thickened, stir in rum. Cover the pastry cream to prevent a skin forming, let cool.

I did not add any rum to the cream, just a dash of pure vanilla , didn't bother to strain the cream, find that a waste of time. What I usually do is to place the pastry cream into my food processor & whizz it, you'll get smooth & lump free pastry cream in seconds.

As for the pastry, use your favourite short crust. I've used my mini 12-hole muffin pan, with 20g of pastry for each tart. Bake the tart cases at preheated 180C for 15 mins & let cool.

After the tart cases have cooled down, fill a piping bag with the cooled pastry cream, pipe the cream into the tart cases & top them with dark cherries. I've used canned pitted dark cherries, cut into halves.

I've made 28 tarts & still left with some pastry cream. I think it should be sufficient to fill 36 tarts (3 mini pans).