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Portuguese custard tarts recipe

Portugese Custard Tarts


  • Author: Louise
  • Prep Time: 20 minutes
  • Cook Time: 40 minutes
  • Total Time: 1 hour
  • Yield: 12 - 16 tarts 1x

Description

The most superb accompaniment to a good cup of coffee you can find! And much easier to make at home than you would think!


Ingredients

  • 1 packet puff pastry
  • ½ cup water
  • ½ cup castor sugar
  • 750ml milk
  • 3 heaped tablespoons cornflour (Maizena)
  • 3 egg yolks
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla essence or 1 vanilla pod (scrape all the seeds out)

Instructions

  1. If you have frozen puff pastry, remember this needs to be fully defrosted so remember to take it out the freezer at least 4-6 hours before cooking.
  2. In a large pot, bring the water and sugar to the boil.
  3. Pour in half the milk which is 1 ½ cups.
  4. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together with the cornflour and the rest of the milk as well as the vanilla essence (or vanilla seeds). Mix until all the ingredients are well combined. I used a hand whisk for this and whisked for at least 1-2 minutes.
  5. Take the milk-sugar-water mixture off the heat and pour it into the egg yolk mixture, whisking well.
  6. Now pour everything back into the pot, place on the stove on medium heat and continue stirring in a figure of eight shape until the mixture thickens nicely and comes to the boil.
  7. Take the custard off the heat, cover with cling wrap and place the custard in the fridge and allow to cool.
  8. In the meantime, roll the puff pastry out – dust with a little flour – and then take a large cookie cutter – about 6-7cm in diameter and cut discs out of the dough.
  9. Spray 2 cupcake tins with Spray and Cook and then press the discs into the cupcake tins so that they take the shape of the mould – these are the pastry cups which will hold the custard.
  10. Now spoon custard into each pastry cup and then bake at 200C for 30 minutes or so until the tops of the custards browns slightly.
  11. Allow to cool before eating.