Portuguese Custard Tarts (Pasteis de Nata)

I love custard. I love love love custard! It's my favourite dessert. I love it warm drizzled over apple pie, cold over fresh fruit and I love it in tarts. There is this little food shop at Market Square(?) at Sunnybank. It's located in a Chinese (High Fresh) supermarket underneath Little Taipei (geez what happened to that place?) and this little shop sells these delicious baked or steamed dumplings and these yummy puff pastry egg tarts! I remember how my partner and I would travel 30 minutes out just get half a dozen or even a dozen of these tarts along with other little dumpling things. What I love most about this little shop is that you can tell the owner loves his job! Much passion and love goes into what he makes and I guess that is why a lot of customers come back for more and moree! I have no idea if that shop still exists there anymore.

fresh from the oven :)

I googled "pastry puff egg tarts" and Portuguese Custard Tarts came up. I guess this was the tart recipe I was after. The pictures looked like the tarts that I was eating before so I pretty much used this recipe from this site by Arianne Spratt. Okay so you didn't have to use loads of eggs so that's a plus for me since I hate using so much yolks from the eggs and I don't know what to cook with the egg whites! And this recipe compared to other egg tart recipes I looked at contained water. I gave the recipe a try and it turned out pretty good! The colour of the custard wasn't really really yellow because of the minimal amount of egg yolks and it wasn't runny at all. When I ate into the tart ....oozes of custard exploded into my mouth and the crunchy pastry was really really really gooooddd. Overall, this recipe was easy to follow and pretty easy to make. Ohhh and it wasn't just right...not too sweet!

Portuguese Custard Tarts (Pasteis de Nata)
adapted by Arianne Spratt from ten.com.au

Serves 6 or one lol
Makes 12 custard tarts

Ingredients

• 200g puff pastry sheets (I used 2 sheets pin rolled out - save the dough don't throw away :) )
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup water
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• 1 cup milk
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 200c.
Cut pastry into 10cm rounds with a round cutter and push gently into 12 muffin pans. Prick bases all over with a fork. Place in the fridge while you make the filling.
Put the sugar and water into a saucepan and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 minutes or until the mixture is slightly syrupy.
Mix the cornflour to a smooth paste with a little of the milk. Add the egg yolks and whisk until combined. Add remaining milk, vanilla and the sugar syrup.

water, cornflour til smooth then add the egg yolks
Return to the pan and stir over a low heat until the mixture thickens. Cool.

spoon cool mixture
Spoon the mixture evenly into the pastry cases and bake for about 20 minutes or until the custard is slightly browned.
Cool and serve. (cool and serve!! i bit into when i took it out lol I couldn't wait hey? LOL)

Notes: This is my (Arianne's) version of the yummy tarts that originate in Portugal. Note that they are supposed to be quite caramelised on the top – they aren’t burnt!!

my baked Portuguese custard tart straight from the oven!