An apple tart is ideal for celebrating the arrival of Autumn, it is a delicious pastry to pair with your cup of tea and children would love it as dessert at snack time. 1. You can make good shortcrust pastry very quick and then place it in the fridge to rest for an hour or more. 2. In the meanwhile, you make a velvet lemon custard and let it to get cool. 3. Make very thin slices of the apples you chose at the food market and create rose decorations on top of the custard in the tarts. 4. Bake the apple tarts in 30 minutes.

In detail, for 6 small apple tarts you need: 100 gr plain flour, 50 gr fresh butter, 40 gr icing sugar, 1 egg, a sprinkle of salt.

As for the lemon custard: 1 yolk, 25 gr white sugar, a spoon of plain flour (less than 10 gr), 125 ml milk, the grated peel of a lemon, a piece of vanilla bean.

Besides, choose good apples at the food market for the rose decorations and save a sprinkle of brown sugar for the end of the recipe making.

So, starting from the preparation of the shortcrust pastry, in a bowl, mix flour, sugar, butter, the egg and a sprinkle of salt. Work the ingredients very quick in order to have a compact homogeneus mixture, which you will place in the fridge for an hour or more.

As for the custard, while in a saucepan you make the milk warm with some grated lemon peel and vanilla seeds, in a bowl, mix and work well the yolk together with a spoon of flour and sugar. Remove the saucepan of warm milk from the cooker and keep on stiring the milk into the mixture. Place again the saucepan on the cooker and let the custard to become slowly thicker and smooth like velvet. As soon as the custard is done leave it for a while to get cooler.

Start to make small discs of shortcrust pastry and gently fit them to small greasy floured baking molds. Add small spoons of custard and thin slices of apple as rose decoration on top.

Bake the apple tarts in the oven for about 30 minutes, 180° C on the first lower level. Add a sprinkle of brown sugar on top of the apple tarts before totally removing them from the oven. Serve the apple tarts as you prefer, add some vanilla cream, for example, or a sprinkle of cardamom to enhance the flavor of the pastry. Enjoy the apple tarts and wishing a beautiful Autumn season to everybody.