Catching up and a recipe

Tuesday night already. Time really is passing way too quickly. Maybe it's because I seem to be about ready for bed as soon as I get home from the cafe these days.

We had our first day of antenatal classes on Saturday up at the hospital. The sessions were about labouring and physiotherapy and really I don't know that they were that helpful. We watched a few birthing videos and that kind of thing.. but they all showed women in 'the zone' with soothing music in the background whose labour seemed to only last about 5 minutes and they were quiet and strong the whole time. I don't think I'm going to be that zen. Apparently though a gym ball is going to be my best friend in a contraction and that's good to know. I think this Saturday's will be a bit more interesting, it's more about how to care for the baby once you bring it home.

After our classes we called into A Day on Earth, because they were having a closing down sale. We saw a couple of old tables that it would have been great to be able to buy but instead we had to be content with this little birdie, name Lulu, from Tuesday Designs. It will go well with the picture I bought from the same sisters last year.


There were lots of other pretty things to look at as well.. it would be fun to have a shop like this.




In other important news, I caved in a bought the dress from my previous post. It should be here on Thursday, yay! Hope it's as cute in real life as it looks on the internet.

And cause a few people asked for it.. here's the recipe for the custard tarts. It's a Donna Hay recipe, so no big secret.


You need 1 batch of shortcrust pastry. I just used a recipe of my mum's that we always use, but any would be ok. They'd work pretty well with frozen pastry also I think.

And for the filling, you need:

1 cup milk
1 cup cream
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
3 eggs
3 egg yolks, extra
1/2 cup caster sugar
freshly grated nutmeg.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Roll out pastry to 3mm thick and place in the base of 6 x 9cm pie tins. Line with baking paper and fill with pie weights. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the weights and paper and bake for a further 10 minutes until golden. Reduce oven temp to 140 degrees. (I didn't bother baking my pastry blind and I think that may be why mine didn't have quite enough custard filling in them).

Place the milk, cream and vanilla bean in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to the boil, remove from heat and set aside. Whisk together the eggs, egg yolks and sugar until pale and thick. Remove vanilla bean from milk mixture and gradually whisk into the egg mix. Pour into tart cases and sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until just set.

If you have more custard left at the end you can pour it into a ramekin and bake in an oven tray filled with water until the custard sets and then you have baked custard, which was quite yummy too.