Pastéis de Nata - Portuguese Custard Tart

A trio of creamy, flaky, blistered tarts.

This is a custard tart with a spiral laminated shell. It’s on many a baker’s bucket list so I put it on mine as well. These come out of Portugal. I made a double batch so I could share with more people. :)

Yay!

It also left me with the surprise of 1 dozen egg whites to use up.

This is a great video demonstrating what to do. Thanks Chef John at Food Wishes.

Pastéis de Nata

Crust

240g flour

½ teaspoon kosher salt

180g-200g water, start low add more water if needed

114g butter, at room temperature

Syrup

300g sugar

180g water

1 cinnamon stick

1 lemon’s peel

Custard

80g flour

½ teaspoon salt

800g milk

12 egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla

Combine the flour, salt and water to form a wet dough. Allow it to rest 10 minutes. In a bowl, by hand, whip up butter to assure it is smooth and spreadable. Not melted and not cool.

Roll the dough, spread one-third of the butter over two-thirds the dough. Do a letter fold. Roll the dough and repeat the steps. You should have one-third of the butter remaining and have done two letter folds.

Chill the dough for 10 minutes.

Roll the dough thinly, spread the remaining butter over the entire dough, leaving the top edge butter free. Moisten the edge with water and roll the dough into a tight log, ending on the moistened edge.

Wrap in plastic wrap and allow to chill 4-24 hours.

Combine sugar, water, cinnamon and lemon peel in a small pot. Bring to a boil. Assure the sugar is liquid, cool.

For the custard: Combine the flour, salt and milk in a saucier pan. Whisk until smooth then slowly heat, stirring constantly until the flour is fully cooked.

Cool for 10 minutes.

Add the egg yolks, vanilla and syrup. Strain into a measuring cup with a spout.

To form the shells, cut the roll into 24 even segments. Using a muffin pan, place each segment, spiral side down and smoosh with your water moistened thumb. Using wet fingers, press the dough up the sides of the muffin walls, ⅛-¼ inch past the edge.

When all are pressed, chill for 10 minutes. Set your oven to 550 -screaming hot- degrees.

Carefully pour the custard into the shells, about ¾ of the way up. Do not overfill. Bake for 12-14 minutes. The tops should have blisters of brown.

Serve warm -not hot-or room temperature.

The Angle Food Cake, uses 12 whites, if you want to make that with your leftover egg whites.

Look at that swirly, laminated bottom. It’s so crispy and crunchy!

Custard filling: Milk, infused syrup and yolks.

They are supposed to be blistered on top. They go in the hottest oven. 550 degrees if your goes that high.

This is one of the Baker’s Bucket List pastries, they say a well versed baker aught to try. I hope to assemble my bucket list and make all the items. I mean a person has to have goals, right?

If you can think of any bucket list bakes I should make please let me know in the comments.

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