Portuguese Custard Tarts, Pasteis De Nata

Makes 12

Pasteis de Nata are little custard filled pastries that originate from a monastery in Lisbon, Portugal’s capital city. These Portuguese custard tarts have become a tourist attraction in Lisbon, with tourist waiting hours just to taste these delicious creamy tarts. For those of you who aren’t in Portugal or don’t want to queue this is a great recipe that gives you a little taste of Lisbon. 

The pastry is light, crumbly and slightly crispy filled with smooth, creamy, vanilla custard. These light creamy delicious Portuguese custard tarts are very yummy served fresh, hot out of the oven, perfect with a cup of tea on a cold autumn afternoon, or great served with vanilla ice cream as an after dinner dessert. These wonderful cute little tarts are also great cold, so are ideal for a summer picnic and a great little lunchbox treat that will get you looking forward to your lunch at work or school.

If you are throwing a party and trying to come up with a fabulous buffet, pasties de nata are ideal as well as tasting wonderful, they can be cooked the day before, they are perfect portion size, you can eat them with your fingers, they are just so convenient for a massive buffet and a wonderful thing to serve up in summer while you are enjoying nature and the beautiful weather.

Ingredients

• 200ml milk
• 70ml double cream
• 2 vanilla pods
• 200g caster sugar
• 6 egg yolks
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• 500g puff pastry

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190C. Lightly grease 12 muffin cups and line bottom and sides with puff pastry.
2. In a saucepan add milk, sugar, cream, egg yolks and flour. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture starts to thicken then add the vanilla pod and stir constantly for 5 minutes, or until thickened. Remove vanilla pod.
3. Fill the puff pastry with the custard mix.
4. Then bake for 20 minutes, until pastry is golden brown and custard is a light brown on top.