Portuguese Egg Tarts

We found this recipe for Pastéis de Nata in The Globe and Mail by Tara O'Brady and wanted to try it out. No sure if they are exactly authentic but holy moly they are good!

This recipe made us 12 tarts, but the Globe says 18...

We made our own dough, which tasted delicious, but it came out a tad thick. Also, we worked our dough in the the muffin cups a little too high so that's why they look a little too browned.

approx time: 1 hr

Ingredients: 1 10 x15 in sheet all butter puff pastry, store-bought, thawed (but we made our own)

All purpose flour, for rolling

1cinnamon stick

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

5 egg yolks

3/4 cup full fat milk, warmed Ground cinnamon, for dusting

Directions:

Preheat oven to 500ª F and position rack in top 1/3 of oven. Roll the pastry sheet to 1/4" thick, 10x15" rectangle. Roll it up from the short side into a tight log, 10" long. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for about 20 minutes. Remove from fridge and trim off the uneven ends. Slice log into 1/2" thick disks. Roll each disk to about 4" in diameter. Grease muffin tin with butter. Fit the dough rounds into the muffin cups and use your fingertips to work the pasty around the edges, but not to the top. Prick dough a few times with fork. Refrigerate this until the custard is ready.

Make the custard:

In a small saucepan, combine 4 tbsp of water, sugar and the cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil over med-high heat stirring until the sugar has melted about 3 mins. Remove syrup from heat and discard cinnamon stick. Add vanilla. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks. While whisking, add the warm milk in a steady stream. Then in a steady stream while still whisking, add the syrup. Return the mixture to low heat and while stirring with a spatula, cook the custard until it coats the back of the spatula. Make sure to continuously scrape the bottom of the pan. This should take about 4 minutes and should resemble heavy cream.

Assemble the tarts:

Ladle the custard into the muffin cups, filling about 3/4 of the way. Place tins on a baking sheet to prevent the bottoms from burning. Bake for 10 minutes, until the custard is golden brown. Turn the broiler to high and cook until the custard has carmelized and blackened in spots, 3-5 minutes. Allow tarts to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before removing to a cooling rack. Dust with cinnamon (we skipped this step as the other authentic ones we've tried didn't have cinnamon) and serve warm.

Enjoy!! xx