Aoife Noonan: This large slice of baked nostalgia won’t let you down

Custard slices remind me of nostalgic Sunday treats, with a quick stop into the local bakery on the way home from visiting grandparents. Glass shelves lined with buns and pastries, plump and golden, stuffed with cream and jam. Dad always chose the cream bun, and mum the coffee slice. It was the vanilla custard slice that sealed the deal for me. I couldn’t resist the crisp sweet puff pastry and that thick canary-yellow custard. The nice lady in the hairnet packaged them up for us and said she’d see us again next week. It was our Sunday ritual.

Those treats, sweet and decadent, are the inspiration for this week’s Comfort Food Classic dessert: a soothing thick vanilla custard sandwiched between two layers of crisp and flaky puff pastry. There are two straightforward elements to this dessert, but the dish as a whole takes a little preparation and setting time.

First, the puff pastry. Use shop-bought for ease and look for an all-butter puff for better flavour and rich flakiness. The recipe uses 320g, which is the average weight per pack in the supermarket. The pastry is divided in two, rolled out, each piece baked between two baking sheets. You can do this in batches if you don’t have multiple baking trays. The important thing here is to weigh the pastry down to prevent it from rising too much; it will still be flaky, but it will be evenly pressed. The pastry is then trimmed and cut into large squares and set aside.

The filling is a classic pastry cream: a custard thickened with either cornflour, flour or another starch. I like to use a mix of both cream and milk for richness, and I also use a vanilla pod for proper vanilla flavour – it really is unbeatable. The little specks of vanilla seeds throughout the custard are gorgeous. Use vanilla extract as an alternative, if you prefer. The custard is very thick, but don’t be alarmed. The cornflour thickens it, while the gelatine sets it for that perfect slice.

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Vanilla custard slices

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The first square of pastry is layered in a baking tray or tin, filled with custard and sealed with the second layer of pastry. It then needs to chill completely. This will take at least four hours, before slicing into 10 fingers to serve.

You can watch me bake this Comfort Food Classic on the Irish Times Food Facebook page tomorrow at 3pm.

Recipe: Vanilla custard slices