Vanilla custard apple pie

Infuse the milk with vanilla. Mix the egg, yolks, sugar, flour and starch together all at once; there is no need to beat the eggs and sugar first.

Put a baking tray in the freezer to cool the custard faster.

Bring the milk back to a boil, temper the egg-starch mixture with it, then pour it back into the remaining milk, whisking swiftly.

Bring to a boil and cook the custard 2 minutes, whisking constantly.

Transfer the pastry cream onto the frozen tray lined with plastic wrap, cool completely and chill in the refrigerator.

Generously grease a 9 to 9.5 inch (24 cm) fluted tart pan with butter.

Roll out the puff pastry scraps, press gently into the edges of the pan and form a quarter-inch lip around the seam; trim the excess and lift up the lip. Freeze the shell until needed.

Smooth out the chilled pastry cream until free of lumps and remove the vanilla beans.

Variation: once a few used vanilla beans are rinsed and dried, blend 'the whole thing' in a powerful blender and sift for homemade vanilla sugar.

Pipe the pastry cream into the frozen tart shell and overlap apple slices in tight rows, about one apple per serving.

Top with vanilla sugar and bake about an hour.