Portuguese recipe
How to make Pastel de nata
Pastéis de nata (plural)
Belém, Lisbon
A small tart of crisp, flaky pastry filled with egg custard, baked in a very hot oven until the top is blistered and dark in spots. Often dusted with cinnamon and eaten with a coffee.
Ingredients
- 1 sheet (about 320 g) ready-rolled all-butter puff pastry
- 250 ml whole milk
- 25 g plain flour
- 1 cinnamon stick and a strip of lemon peel
- 200 g sugar
- 100 ml water
- 4 egg yolks
- Ground cinnamon and icing sugar, to serve
Method
- Heat the oven to its highest setting (at least 250 °C) and butter a 12-hole muffin tin.
- Roll the pastry up tightly into a log, cut it into 12 slices and press each slice, cut side up, into a hole of the tin with a wet thumb, so the pastry comes up the sides.
- Boil the sugar, water and cinnamon stick for 3 minutes to make a syrup.
- Whisk the flour into the milk with the lemon peel and heat, stirring, until it thickens. Take it off the heat and stir in the syrup. Remove the cinnamon and peel and let it cool for 10 minutes.
- Whisk in the egg yolks and fill each pastry case about three quarters full.
- Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the pastry is golden and the custard is set with dark spots on top. Cool a little and dust with cinnamon.
Made it at home? Tick it off and it goes into your kitchen passport.
Monks of the Jerónimos Monastery made the original tarts. After the monastery closed in 1834 the recipe was sold, and the bakery Pastéis de Belém, open since 1837, still keeps it secret.
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