We've always believed that creativity is a part of everyday life and art need not be confined to sculptures and paintings. Here at The Little Arts Academy, we teach the students to make art a part of everyday life. With our little fruit tartlets, we used cups to make the biscuit base (who needs a tart mould) and picked up the most colourful fruits we could find in season, mixed with our Chinese New Year staple, oranges :) Enjoy.

Made by the students of Little Arts Academy's Visual Arts Discovery Programme who were taught by volunteers from Temasek Polytechnic Business School's students from Diploma in Culinary & Catering Management.

Chefs: Alethea, Sephine and Bei Jia

Ingredients

For filling:
453g Milk
3 eggs
42g cornflour
42g butter (unsalted)
113g sugar
1 cap of vanilla essence
A pinch of salt

For pastry
680.5g Pastry Flour
227g Shortening
227g Butter (unsalted)
227g Milk
A pinch of salt

Toppings:
Pineapples
Honeydew
Strawberries
Orange
Lychees
Blueberries

Instructions

For the filling
1. Put 80% of the milk and half of the sugar in a pot. Bring to a simmer
2. Add remaining sugar and cornflour to a separate bowl and mix in 1 egg at a time until everything is incorporated
3. Add remaining 20% of the milk, a capful of vanilla essence and a pinch of salt
4. When the milk and sugar has come to full boil, add 80% of the hot milk and sugar into the mixing bowl and whisk vigorously to prevent the eggs from scrambling
5. Pour the mixture in the mixing bowl back into the pot, simmer at very low heat and keep whisking vigorously to prevent the custard from becoming scrambled burnt milky sweet eggs. Get your friends to take turns and help with the whisking until you get thick custard.
6. Take the custard off the heat and leave to cool. Put in the fridge till required.

For the pastry
1. Preheat oven at 190 degrees Celsius
2. Combine flour and salt in medium bowl. Add shortening and butter and rub in with fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal.
3. Mix in enough milk by tablespoonfuls to form dough that is smooth and just comes together. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate 1 hour.
4. Roll dough out on lightly floured surface and cut out round tart shells with a cup. Prick holes in the bottom of the shell and bake for 10-15mins till golden brown at 190 degrees Celsius.
5. Transfer to rack and cool completely. Fill tart shell with custard and top with luscious bite-sized pieces of fruit.

For maximum colour, use 1 lychee, 1 orange, 1 strawberry and a couple of blueberries. Maximum yumminess in a bite!
Enjoy :)