Gluten free, low FODMAP tarts
Put the butter and flour into a large mixing bowl. With your hands rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Next add the ground almonds and icing sugar and continue to rub the mix together.
Add the water and egg, then quickly mix it all together with your hands. Once combined you should be able to shape the dough into a ball. Wrap this ball of dough in cling film and leave in the fridge overnight.
Preheat your oven to 180c or 356f
Roll the dough out to around 5mm thick and lay it in the pie tin. If you need to you can use any scraps to cover any edges of the pie tin you may have missed.
Once you have set the dough in the pie tin you want to use a fork to make small holes across the bottom of it. Then you'll need to blind bake it.
I have always used baking beans when blind baking a pastry shell. But the couple of times I tried this pastry I did not use them and it worked out fine.
Bake the pastry shells in the oven for 20 minutes. When cooked, they should be golden brown around the edges and shrink away from the edge of the tin.
Start by beating your egg yolks together with the caster sugar, they should become slightly thickened. Next whisk in the cornflour.
Heat the milk and vanilla extract in a saucepan on a low heat until it just starts to boil. Remember to sir it regularly so it does not scald on the bottom. Apologies to the experts among us, but for the novices, milk does not boil like water. It should rise slightly in the pan but not bubble.
Pour half of the warm milk into the egg mixture. You need to try and pour this into the side of the bowl rather then directly onto the eggs. Also you must whisk constantly while adding the milk to avoid scrambling the eggs.
Now pour the egg/milk mix back into the saucepan containing the remaining milk. Whisk constantly. You will notice the mixture thicken. There is a fine line here, if you do not allow the mixture to thicken enough you'll be left with a creme paissiere that is too runny and unusable. You can also leave it on the heat too long and the mixture will split and become unusable. Ideally you want a consistency you could pipe in a piping bag.
Once the mixture has thickened you need to take it off the heat and cool it rapidly so it does not continue cooking. I found the best way to do this is to put the saucepan into a large bowl of ice water.
Pipe or spoon the filling into the cooled pastry cases then top with strawberries in whatever style works for you!