Tarts in a Hurry

I've been making too many 'instant' type meals lately *stress*
Chop-and-stirs...slice-and-fry's... stack-and-serves... shape-and-bake's; you name it!

I wish I had more time to create new combinations, experiment with unique ingredients and cook the many fresh fruits and vegetables of autumn, but alas.... life's obligations have placed time limits on my daily kitchen sprees and grounded me from venturing into my stacks of delightful cookbooks filled with vibrant cooking inspiration.

I can't remember the first time I made these...I vaguely recall them being concocted 3 years ago through a 'ready-rolled puff-pastry' experimenting phase I had for a couple of weeks. I discovered the many things I could create with these conveniently rolled out layers of frozen pastry; it was the birth of my famous Chicken pie, sausage rolls and apple puffs~
I usually get my pastry stash from my local supermarket in the frozen food/dessert aisle; but if you don't see them there, try getting blocks of pastry and rolling them into sheets yourself. Would probably take you an extra 5-10 minutes doing it this way.
Well here's another one of those bake and stack ideas I've had with this ingenious instant puff by Pampas.

For an extremely decadent dessert ready in less than 20 minutes, you need:

1 layer ready rolled puff pastry straight from the freezer,
don't worry about thawing it too much. it just needs to be workable (slice-able in this instance)200 ml bottled vanilla custard
1 tbsp icing sugar for dusting
3 tbsp good quality cherry jam
couple tbps milk
fresh / pitted bottled cherries in fruit concentrate

Lay out the puff pastry, slice with a butter knife to shape into squares and long shapes. You don't exactly have to be extremely accurate with this. Follow exactly as I have done if you like. Mine makes 3 mini tarts and 2 large tart-boat thingies~
Bake in preheated 180 degree oven on some non-stick baking paper as instructed on packet (Mine took 15 minutes to brown and puff up completely) Press the boats down gently in the middle to create a fairly shallow cavity, spoon in the jam, pour in the custard, arrange the cherries and dust on the sugar. How easy is that?!~Get crafty with the toppings....strawberries and cream? apple sauce and cinnamon? Let those creative juices fly~
From many years of playing around with puff pastry and toppings; custard still takes the gold medal~ Cherries can be a little pricey; but in my opinion, it's tops the strawberry any day!

Su loves her cherries.. <3