Portugese Custard Tarts

[Merlin5]

Has anyone made these? I want to have a go though I'm a little intimidated by working with thin, sticky, fragile dough and the laminating process. I'm also not sure that my oven goes to 290c, I'll have to check tomorrow. Still, I think they'll be awesome so it should be worth the trouble.


Anyway, Chef John is my favourite, makes me laugh a lot. Watch this video, but then you must watch it at half speed. Someone commented below the video that at 1/2 speed he sounds like a happy drunk. It's true and it's so funny to listen to.

 

[Merlin5]

Hey Raymond, I remember when you originally posted about the tarts you tried in Lisbon and they've been in the back of my mind ever since. And the ones you made look awesome.

My oven goes to 270c. Do you think that will cut it? How long was your preparation before baking, i.e, after the final rolling did you refrigerate the dough overnight or just a couple of hours? I want to try and make and eat some on the same day. If they turn out successfully, I'll record the crunch as I bite into one.

Did you use a cinnamon stick for the custard? I've got sweet cinnamon powder, will that do?

Have you been watching Travel Man. Just watched the Portugal one and they do look very nice.

Actually I caught some of that episode but must have missed the custard tarts, I'll watch it on catch up.

 

[Merlin5]

Thanks Raymond, I'll see how I get on. I won't be using a vanilla pod by the way, have you seen the price? Tesco sell a single pod for £3.50

I'll use my vanilla extract.


edit: I just discovered why vanilla pods are expensive. Interesting facts of the day: It's work intensive because in countries outside of central america, the orchids the vanilla pods come from have to be hand pollinated to actually grow the pods before the flowers wilt and fall off, and thousands of farmers are employed for several months to do this. Pretty amazing. Whereas in central america, their is a species of bee called Melipona that does the pollinating.

 

[Merlin5]

online/ebay is the way to go - since they are postable - check out hotuk historic recommendations/discussion

Yeah, working out about £1.50/£1.60 per pod on ebay, much better. Is there any particularly significant improvement though scraping out and using pod seeds instead of using extract? By the way, one good way I found out to use pods is to make lots of extract by throwing a few pods into vodka.

Vanilla turf wars.

Yep, I was reading about that last night, another reason it's expensive.

I watched that video, he spreads his butter into the pastry...that seems far too consuming than just fold it, like how you make croissants.

Raymond, I'm inclined to follow the youtube recipes I've watched only because it's easy to see each step done, but I'd like to follow yours if possible.

I'm fine with following your custard filling process, but a bit unclear about your dough and butter process, can you elaborate? Why the mound in the middle of the star and is that going to be more difficult to achieve than it looks given it's a sticky dough? How big should that star be? It's hard to tell from the photos.

How is the dough getting separate layers of butter if you're only placing a slab of butter into the star shape at the beginning? And what do you mean by 1 x 3? Also, you say to rest the dough after rolling it, but there's no mention of refridgerating it to firm it up, whereas other recipes I've watched all chill their roll of dough?

 

[Merlin5]

Ok, I've made a start! Raymond, I'm following your recipe, same amounts of ingredients exactly.
I left butter out of the fridge overnight so it was as soft as it could get for spreading.

I'm going to use half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon for the syrup as I don't have a cinnamon stick. Anyway, forgive me but I decided to do the 3 layers of lamination and buttering instead of the block of butter in the X shape. I need to learn basic dough rolling 101 though as I had trouble maintaining a square shape. My first rolling wasn't too bad, but the ones after that looked like a map of Africa which made it more difficult to get the sides folded over to the centre.

So I got to a point where I almost threw it in the bin but somehow managed to salvage things. I ended up wasting dough and butter because I had to trim quite a lot on the final lamination to have a square shape. I've ended up with 10 x 1 inch pieces, so better than nothing. This is definitely the hardest thing I've ever attempted. The dough wasn't as sticky as I expected and a little easier to work with, but I had to use a ton of flour while working with it. After rolling it, I put it in the fridge for 2 hours. I'm now putting them into the tin and then I'm going to start on the custard filling.

 

[Merlin5]

That’s VERY thick cuts. It’s a finger width deep.

Not bad first attempt though! How is it turning out?

Going ok so far I think!

Hmm yeah, I cut them exactly an inch wide. In fact I tried a smaller cut to start with and I was struggling to stretch the dough into shape in the muffin tin without the base thinning out too much which would put my pastry in danger of leaking custard.

If you check out cupcake gemma's portugese tarts on youtube she cuts hers about the same.

I've now prepped the filling. Flour, 1/3 milk and salt is now lightly mixed in a bowl. Rest of milk is in saucepan ready to be boiled, and I'm just letting the sugar syrup cool down for an hour as per your instructions before boiling the milk. I'm going to add some vanilla extract as well.

I put ground cinnamon in to the syrup mixture and it's turned the colour a bit dark, so I'm hoping it doesn't affect the final yellowness.

 

[Merlin5]

I just measured my muffin tin and each mould is 3" diameter x 1" deep

 

[Merlin5]

I've let the syrup cool down, not actually hour but about half an hour, my thermometer says it's 34c. So I've boiled the milk, poured half and then the rest over the flour/salt/milk, added vanilla extract and added the syrup mixture (strained). I'm just waiting for that to cool how before adding the eggs, and then I can finally bake them!

I'm a little concerned over the colour of the filling at this point. Either the cinnamon or the vanilla extract has given it an off white colour. Hopefully it will right itself after adding the eggs.

 

[Merlin5]

Thanks Raymond. I added the eggs, was ok, kinda pale yellow so I've added one extra yolk and it's a good colour now. I've got tons of custard left, any idea how long I can keep it in the fridge?

Oven has just reached maximum 270c, so in they go!

I hope they don't spilll over, lol.

 

[Merlin5]

Looking forward to seeing the results!

They're bubbling away and browning nicely! Couple of them look like they're threatening to spill over but they're holding.. This is a real test of my oven that it doesn't blow up, it's so hot in my kitchen right now.

 

[Merlin5]

Oh.. my … word.

Pretty much perfection I think. Look great, and taste awesome. I'm quite proud of myself.

I've eaten one, still way too hot really, nearly burnt my tongue but wow, so crispy with a super creamy custard. And I can really taste the cinnamon as well.
Excuse the excess of photos, gotta see them from all angles of course, lol.

And as promised, the crunch test video below. Listen with headphones.
Raymond, I gave you a credit in the video description.

 

[Merlin5]

ASMR heaven!

That’s the right noise! The Lidi ones do not do that.

Thanks, that's a great compliment! Yes it is quite ASMR isn't it.
I so very nearly binned the dough this afternoon when I thought I'd messed it up. Glad I didn't.

 

[Merlin5]

Thanks Muska

Raymond, that's fine by me if I can shorten the time of the process, I'd rather not wait 2 hours tbh.
Yep, I filled a glass of water and kept my fingers and thumbs wet when I moulded the dough into the tins.

 

[Merlin5]

I made more pasteis de nata and they're awesome. I used a different custard recipe and a different method for making my puff pastry. I did inverted puff where you roll the dough inside the butter instead of vice versa. Ask me if it was difficult? **** yes, very! Trying to roll out chilled butter in a warm kitchen and stopping it from softening up and sticking to everything is a nightmare. I did it over two days. But it's come out well, much flakier than my last effort and softer too, much more like the shop bought ones. Made them shallower too in a shallower muffin tin. They didn't quite char on top as before though.

And just for a comparison, here's a single tart I made with a different recipe last night. It came out with the nice charring but the custard colour was very dull. So I threw that custard (6 eggs and half a pint of milk wasted) and re-made the custard with the other recipe as pictured above. Must be something to do with water content. There was less water in the above recipe.