Miss Popularity - Portuguese Tarts

Variations of these tarts have been around on the internet for ages and the recipe for this version of Portuguese Custard Tarts originally comes from Bill Granger's everyday cookbook.

There's a very good reason why such a large number of cooks and bloggers have written about this recipe - it is easy to make, the custard filling is sweet and rich (but not too rich), and the final result is one of the best Portuguese tarts you'll eat. And considering that comparable tarts at a café can be quite pricey, you can get a dozen tarts from this recipe that will have your friends asking when your new café will open.

So here is my version of the tarts - you'll notice that the tops of this batch are deliberately non-burnt because they were for my mum and she doesn't like eating burnt bits!

Portuguese Custard Tarts
Makes 12

Ingredients

3 egg yolks
115g (¾ cup) caster sugar
2 tbsp cornflour
400ml full cream milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry, slightly thawed

Method

1. Put the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour in a saucepan and stir together. Add the milk and whisk until there are no more lumps.
2. Put the saucepan over medium heat and cook until the mixture thickens and starts to bubble.
3. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla. You now have a wonderful custard – but do not eat it just yet.
4. Pour the custard into a bowl and place some cling wrap onto the surface to stop a skin from forming. Leave to cool for about 30 minutes.
5. Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin pan.
6. Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F)
7. Now, prepare the pastry cases: cut the puff pastry in half and place on piece over the other. Roll up the pastry tightly from the short end, like a cigar. Cut the pastry into twelve 1cm (½ inch) pieces. Use a rolling pin to flatten each cut piece of pastry into a circle about 10cm (4 inches) in diameter. The circles should be reasonably thin.
8. Put a circle of pastry into each hole in the muffin pan.
9. Spoon the cooled custard into each pastry case.
10. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is golden. If you do want some dark bits, turn up the oven to 210°C for the last 5 minutes of baking.
11. Remove from the oven and allow the tarts to cool for 5 minutes in the pan before taking them out to finish cooling on a wire rack.

Whisk the egg yolks, cornflour and sugar;
stir in cream and milk; bring to a simmer; add vanilla

Preparing the pastry cases

Fill the cases with custard;

remove cooked tarts to cool on a wire rack

And here is a shot of my kitchen benchtop while I waited for the custard to cool. Typical Sunday, really:

(Clockwise): Sunday papers (with article on The Sartorialist); thinking about whether to have the levain ficelle (from Victoire bakery) now or later; definitely having Victoire's croissant now (with new Vegemite); forgot to put the eggs away; trying not to have a taste of the cooling custard