Caporegime
You don’t need vanilla at all, it’s not called for in the recipe really.
Portugese Custard Tarts
- Thread starter Merlin5
- Start date
online/ebay is the way to go - since they are postable - check out hotuk historic recommendations/discussion
Caporegime
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.
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.
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.
Yep, I was reading about that last night, another reason it's expensive.
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?
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I love Pasteis de Nata (my mother is portuguese so I have a bias) and always indulge when I go to Portugal to see the family.
Sintra and Lisbon are where the best can be bought, but in the algarve, most small cafe's stock them. They taste amazing with sprinkled cinnamon.
I've not baked them myself, but I do have the little tins you cook them in, which can be found in most supermarkets in Portugal - which means they should be readily available on the bay.
Sintra and Lisbon are where the best can be bought, but in the algarve, most small cafe's stock them. They taste amazing with sprinkled cinnamon.
I've not baked them myself, but I do have the little tins you cook them in, which can be found in most supermarkets in Portugal - which means they should be readily available on the bay.
Caporegime
The little mount is so when you stretch it, there is enough dough to stretch over. The 1x3 is just the fold, so you stretch it to the size as shown and fold it 1/3rd in one side and 1/3rd on the other side. Then you do it again. So 2 times will give you 6 layers.
Associate
This was from Lidl yesterday. Very nice but would like a tad more filling.
Soldato
Had these when we went to Portugal, they are lovely.
Sainsbury's have them on the Bakery, they are pretty good with a decent filling.
Sainsbury's have them on the Bakery, they are pretty good with a decent filling.
I picked up a couple of these from Lidl this morning. The filling is a bit meh, the pastry is great though, very (too) morish!
sprinkle a little cinnamon on them. takes them up a notch
Caporegime
6 months ago I went on a real Pastel De Nata adventure/journey/mission to find out as much about it as possible. Went to Lisbon and tried it all over town.
These 2 are the best ones known locally, the one in the white box is famous and original, like THE original.
What to look out for is the crusty pastry. I hate those now with a soggy bottom. It should be crunchy all the way around, you can feel the layers of pastry and the effect of all that butter in between making it flakey. The custard should have this "skin" on top and the middle is gooey. If you look at the bottom you will see a circular pattern, almost like a finger print. That shows it was folded and the sliced before placing it into the tin.
Pasteis de Belem are my favs, I always visit them when I'm in Lisbon. There's always a line out the door in summer.
Excuse the poor phone pics, took in 2013.
Going back in September.
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Caporegime
Pasteis de Belem are my favs, I always visit them when I'm in Lisbon. There's always a line out the door in summer.
Excuse the poor phone pics, took in 2013.
The line moves pretty quickly tbh, I went twice in 4 days and each time waited no more than 10mins.
There’s a lot of seats at the back, you can just go take a seat for waiter service which can skip the queue.
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.
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.
Caporegime
That’s VERY thick cuts. It’s a finger width deep.
Not bad first attempt though! How is it turning out?
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.
Caporegime
You can have it very thin, it will hold but I guess your tins are much larger.
I just measured my muffin tin and each mould is 3" diameter x 1" deep
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.
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.
Caporegime
It should be fine. Good luck!