Saturday, October 30, 2010

Portuguese Tarts

I've been wanting to make these for ages.  Years ago I used a recipe by Jamie Oliver where he rolled the pastry with cinnamon and sugar; and recently I read a recipe on Not Quite Nigella where the custard seemed really easy.  I decided to fuse the 2 using Jamie's pastry idea and NQN's custard.  I have to say that I absolutely love making these pastry circles.  I think it's the thrill of seeing the swirls created by the cinnamon sugar as you roll out the discs of pastry, it's somehow very therapeutic.  Some people like to go to spas to relax, me... I like to roll pastry!
Makes 12
Ingredients
3 egg yolks
115g   caster sugar
2 tbsp cornflour
230ml  Cream or  NQN suggests just  milk works  well too
170ml Milk
2 tsp vanilla extract or Queen Vanilla Bean Paste
1 sheet of puff pastry
1  - 2 tsp cinnamon sugar
Method
1. Lightly grease a 12-hole 80ml muffin tray.


2. Put the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour in a pan and whisk together. Gradually whisk in the cream and milk until smooth.

3. Place the pan over a medium heat and cook, stirring, until the mixture thickens and comes to the boil. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Transfer the custard to a bowl, cover the surface with cling film to prevent a skin forming and leave to cool.

4. Preheat the oven to 200C.

5. Cut the pastry dough sheet in half, sprinkle one half with cinnamon sugar.  Put the other half on top, sprinkle with more cinnamon sugar and set aside for 5 minutes. Roll up the pastry tightly from the short end and cut the pastry log into 12 x 1cm rounds. Lay each pastry round on a lightly floured surface and use a rolling pin to roll out until each is 10cm in diameter.

6. Press the pastry rounds into the muffin tin. Spoon the cooled custard into the pastry cases and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the pastry and custard are golden. Leave the tarts in the tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

2 comments:

  1. Oh my God!! These look delicious and sound even more delicious in the recipe. Will you come and bake some for me?

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you pay my airfare... I'd love to!

    ReplyDelete