
Fr D.W. Ryan, sometime chaplain of Digby Stuart Catholic Teacher-training college in Roehampton (the Alma mater of my own dear mater) had a saying, which I vaguely remember from childhood. The saying was basically that when things go wrong it is our lady smiling upon us, giving us something to offer up for the holy souls. It’s a saying that I have always found a bit much. Yesterday it came back to me in a harrowing tale of broken pastry. Allow me to tell you about it.
Sunday morning, May Bank Holiday Weekend 2012: picture the scene! I got up rather early – having been bolstered by by Bloody Besses on Saturday, and having given it large again at a party (at which I was dressed up as white rapper Eminem, but managed to look more like a butch nun). The reason for my early rising was to make a tart for a dinner party in the evening. I’d made the pastry the night before, and needed to roll it and bake it, and make a crema pasticcera before the 11.30am mass.
I have little recollection of the whole morning process, indeed my memory from yesterday begins roughly half-way through the Pater Noster. Nevertheless, when I returned from mass I found two neat tarts, filled with delicious crema pasticcera. One of the tarts was to be ‘Our Lady’s Crown’, a pudding inspired by Our Lady’s royal titles, for the marvellous month of May. The other tart I considered a little over baked, it was an auxiliary flan. It was rejected.
When, at the end of a pleasantly boozy (but not excessive) dinner, I brought out Our Lady’s Crown, resplendent with its jewels of summer fruits and piped cream, it had stuck right royally in the flan dish, and wouldn’t come out. Now, I’d worried about it this, because I would usually make such a thing in a tin, and take the shell out of the tin. But I thought it’d be fine... I was in a rush, so I chanced it. The dish was blessed by Our Lady, she wouldn’t let it go wrong.
Disaster! The whole thing collapsed and it made me rather sad, even though I think it tasted delicious. Here’s how I made it. Whatever you do, use a well-greased tin.
Ingredients
For the pastry: 
3oz butter
2 oz sugar
7 oz flour
3 egg yolks
For the crema pasticcera:
4 egg yolks
1 egg
5 tablespoons flour
5 tablespoons sugar
1 pt milk
Vanilla extract
For the top:
A quantity of summer fruits (I used the English strawberries and raspberries, and some blueberries)
Double cream
Some jam, for a glaze
Method:
Pastry
I like a traditional sweet pastry, as it has very little shrinkage during cooking. It’s sensible to make the pastry the night before, that way it can chill down and will be easier to work the following morning. Cream the butter and sugar together, then work in the egg yolks. You should have a pleasing yellow paste. Work in the flour and form the pastry into a ball. Then wrap in foil and put in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Roll the pastry out, and place in a WELL GREASED flan dish, or better still a nice tin. Give a decent lip, which you can then either trim down after baking or leave for a rustic look. Bake blind for 15 minutes, and then for another 7 at about 190C. Leave it to cool completely.
Crema Pasticcera
I suppose you could call this crème patissiere, and you’d be right, but I’ve always admired the Italian approach to puddings... which is basically to make a jolly good chilled custard, and to couple it either with pastry or cake and leave it at that. So, in union with this principle, I use the Italian lingo.
I have a couple of tricks for CP. The first is to run a sink or big dish of cold water at the beginning. This means you can cool the bottom of the pan, to stop the CP from curdling. The other is to use a whole egg in addition to egg yolks. This gives a lighter cream.
Begin with two pans. In one place the milk, the sugar, and the vanilla. You want to bring this up to just below the boil.
In the other pan beat together the yolks and the egg with the flour, until they are a smooth paste. When the milk is hot, pour it into a pyrex jug. Pour slowly into the egg and flour mixture, whisking constantly. I do this off the heat. Then put the whole mixture over a low heat. Cook until the mixture thickens, again whisking constantly. You want to do this slowly. Do not overheat. I tend to cook until it bubbles a tiny bit and then plunge the bottom of the pan into cold water and... you've guessed it... whisking constantly. Let the CP cool before putting it into the tart shells. Then chill them.
Topping
When the tart(s) are cool, top with fruit, glaze with jam melted with a little water, and decorate with piped whipped cream (double).
And what of the difficult doctrine of Our Lady’s Smile (incidentally if anyone knows about that do tell me – the only thing I can find on the internet relates to St Therese of Lisieux and that’s something rather different)? Well, it occurred to me as I ate a slice of the auxiliary tart this morning, which slid easily out of dish and onto plate… that in truth Our Lady is crowned by the marginalised and forgotten, that Our Lady draws all to her heart and smiles upon us all. So – even whilst it would be crass to draw too many similarities between the forgotten back-up tart and the forgotten and marginalised – there is a beauty in the way things worked out that made me think.
Not only was our lady crowned with the broken and unbeautiful – but nonetheless delicious – but also she was crowned with the marginalised and forgotten.
Perhaps Our Lady was smiling after all.

Regina in caelum assumpta, ora pro nobis!