Today's offering of Portugese Custard Tarts come from my newest book purchase 'Recipes from my Mother for my Daughter' by Lisa Faulkner. I'm really enjoying this book, the recipes are quite simple and it's basically filled with things I actually want to eat.
I amended the recipe in the book slightly because I didn't have all the ingredients. I went to the shops with a list of things I needed and came out with 3 bags of shopping and nothing on the list! This unfortunately is not a one-off for me, I actually love supermarkets. Like, really love them. There was a time that I'd sneak off to the supermarket at 2am and spend 1.5 hours just wandering around looking and buying. Plus I'm a sucker for the supermarket tricks that force you to walk through the whole store and pick up things you didn't go there for. They pretty much get me every time, I just get excited. I'm in recovery now and am getting better at sticking to the list but sometimes I have a relapse, like today :).
So without further ado, here is the recipe
Butter for greasing
250ml (8oz) double cream
150ml (1/4 pint) milk
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
4 egg yolks
2 tablespoons of cornflour
125g (4oz) caster sugar
150g ready-made puff pastry (chilled)
Flour for dusting
Handfull of blueberries and strawberries
1. Preheat the oven to 190ºC (375ºF), gas mark 5 and grease a 12-hole muffin tin.
2. Put the cream and milk in a saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod into the saucepan as well as the empty pod. Bring to a simmer then take off the heat.
3. Whisk together the egg yolks, cornflour and sugar in a mixing bowl until it becomes a paste. Sieve the milk mixture into the bowl of egg paste and mix together quickly and thoroughly.
4. Return it all to the saucepan and heat over a moderate heat until it thickens but don't let it boil. Take the pan off the heat.
5. Whilst the custard is cooling, roll out the pastry as thin as you can, on a lightly floured surface. Roll it up into a sausage and cut it into 12 discs. Roll each one to about 3½ inches in diameter and gently press them into the holes of the muffin tin. Lightly prick the bases with a fork and fill to just over halfway.
Add 1 or 2 pieces of fruit per tart. (I added a couple of slices of strawberry and 1 blueberry per tart.)
6. Bake in the pre-heated oven for around 20 minutes until they are browned on top. (note - my tarts did not brown so I put them under the grill. You must keep an eye on them though or they'll burn, not that that happened to me or anything...)
Leave to cool in the tin, before carefully removing them and enjoy!
The original recipe uses lemon rind (add at the milk stage) and I've also seen recipes with cinnamon which I think would taste perfect. That said I LOVED these tarts. I probably ate 6 of them and then had to exercise some restraint and share them with the family.
Let me know how you get on!
Peace & Love
xx
