With All Your Gypsy Charms

Nothing to do with those charming caravan-dwelling wanderers ... this is Gypsy tart. A Kentish favourite, I've never met anyone outside of the South East of England who has ever heard of it, let alone tasted it, yet to those of us lucky enough to have experienced it, it's like a wonderful secret. My friend here in Edinburgh is married to a boy from about five miles away from where I grew up and when I mentioned it to him last year, he was so excited, we talked about how you'd only ever get it at school once a year, which bakery sold it etc, it felt like being part of a secret club.

So here it is - pastry, condensed milk and brown sugar. I haven't perfected this (but I will), perhaps I should have used full-fatarse condensed milk instead of reduced-fatarse and it clearly needed longer than the recipe directed but, man alive, it was good. And now it is gone; all of it. Oh dear.




Gypsy Heart, Jim Reeves