Easy Homemade Mandarin Pie

Hello everyone ! Welcome back for a brand new recipe. Today, I would like to share with you a sweet recipe, both easy to make and delicious. I also like to make this recipe because despite having custard into this pie, it still feels light to eat, not stuffing. I think the mandarins do a great job at balancing the heaviness of the custard. With no further talk, let’s jump into it!

You’ll need:

a puff pastry (I personally use pre-made ones)
mandarins
2 oranges
sugar (for syrup)
300mL of milk
some natural vanilla extract
3 eggs
90g of sugar
50g of corn flour
75g of unsalted butter

First things first, let’s make the custard.

Pour the milk into a saucepan with the vanilla extract and warm it. Once it’s warm enough, remove it from the fire and let infuse aside.

Mix together the eggs, the 90g of sugar and the corn flour until you get a creamy mixture.

Pour the milk into this mixture et stir. Pour everything back into the saucepan. Constantly stir up on medium fire for about 4 minutes. Then, keep stiring for a minute while rising the fire temperature.

Add the butter and stir up until the whole mix is very creamy.

Pour into a clean dish et set aside in the fridge for at least 1 hour before using.

Now, let’s bake the puff pastry.

You’ll need some baking ceramic marbles. Place the pastry into a mold, cover it with some baking paper and place the marbles into it. This way, the pastry won’t rise inside and leave space for filling. Bake it at 180°C until the pastry gets golden on the sides. When baked, let it cool down, before adding anything.

Then, let’s prepare the pie filling.

Peel off the mandarins and then cut every wedges in 2 pieces. Then, fill up the empty pastry with the custard you made at the beginning of the recipe. Fill it as evenly as possible. Finally, stick the mandarin half-wedges into the custard, pointy ends down and cut sides up. Fill it all the way until there’s no sight of the custard underneath anymore.

Last, but not least, let’s add an orange syrup on top.

Into a saucepan, mix the juice and zest from 2 oranges with some sugar. I’ll be honest with you, I have absolutely no idea how much sugar I use each time I make this syrup…. I always use my eye as measuring cup… So my advice is to trust what you see and add little at first then add up if necessary. You should get something not too liquid, but not something like jelly. Rather something you can easily pour on the pie, something that’ll stay among the fruits and not too deep down in the pie.

You can sprinkle some icing sugar on top just before serving for a more dramatic entrance. And voilà ! Enjoy !