In Portugal, these are known as Pastéis de Nata, those wonderful small custard tarts made with crisp, flaky pastry encasing a delicious baked custard.
This recipe is from my own collection. It has been stuck on the fridge for years and I finally decided to give it a go. I used ready-made puff pastry as suggested.
A sheet of puff pastry
100g caster sugar
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp cornflour
250ml milk
200ml single cream
½ a vanilla pod or ½ tsp vanilla extract
Icing sugar to dust the pastry
Preheat the oven to 200ºC.
Grease a 12 hole muffin tray or cake tin.
Take your pastry out of the fridge about an hour before you want to use it, to allow it to soften slightly.
Unroll it and dust with icing sugar. Now roll it back up into a tight log and using a sharp knife, cut it into 12 rounds.
Sprinkle some icing sugar onto your board and using a rolling pin, dusted with icing sugar, roll each circle flat to roughly 11cm across.
I used the rolling pin to start with and then used my fingers to stretch the pastry, in a circular motion, until I'd got the right size for the tin. Mold the circles into your muffin tray and put them into the fridge.
Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until creamy.
Mix the cornflour with a little milk (taken from the 250ml) and whisk into the yolks.
Heat the single cream, milk and vanilla in a saucepan until nearly boiling. Take out the vanilla pod (if using) and whisk slowly into the yolks. Then pour back into the saucepan and heat gently, stirring continuously, for about three minutes. It will thicken.
Ladle or spoon into the pastry cases to about three quarters full.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden.
I made these twice, once in small cake tins and once in a muffin tray. A word of warning -
do not overfill with the custard or they will overflow! My attempts did, both times, so I simply trimmed off the excess custard with a knife. Always a solution and I'm not sure my family were any the wiser ...
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