Black and White Tartlets

I wanted something a little elegant for our upcoming brunch, so I used a recipe from Ina Gartner (the Barefoot Contessa) for a fruit tart, but I made them in my mini cupcake tin instead:

Beat in the mixer till combined: 3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temp and 1/2 cup sugar.
Then add 1/2 tsp vanilla and mix again.
Sift together1 3/4 cups flour and a pinch of salt, then add to the butter and beat till the dough comes together.

I greased the tin generously with Crisco and baked the shells at 350F for 12 min.

For the filling, beat 6 egg yolks and 3/4 cup sugar for 3 minutes till it's light yellow very smooth and falls in ribbons. Add 3 Tbsp corn starch and beat again.

Bring 2 cups milk to a boil with a scraped vanilla bean, but do not let it scorch. Remove from heat and pour very slowly into the egg mixture while beating like mad. Pour back in the saucepan and cook over medium till thick. I actually ended up learning an interesting fact about cornstarch with this recipe. I overcooked it, which means the cornstarch releases and the sauce gets very thin again. As soon as it starts to thicken is the time to remove it from the heat.

Then stir in 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp almond extract, 2 Tbsp cream and 2 Tbsp butter. I presed a piece of plastic wrap over the top to prevent it from forming a skin while it cooled enough to put in the tartlet shells.

Then I washed some lovely blackberries and topped each tartlet. They chilled for a couple hours before our lunch.