Portugese tarts

I sent some Portuguese tarts with DH to share at work yesterday.
I had used a different recipe before but i tried this new one which require cooking the custard, where the other one you only had to microwave for 30secs (and it apparently did something, not sure what exactly!) Don't have the microwave at the moment so it good to find a new recipe. This new recipe also called for lemon zest to be cooked with the custard and then removed which i think makes them even more awesome! Recipe from here and they have pictures

Portuguese custard tarts

Ingredients: 3 egg yolks, ½ cup caster sugar, 2 tbsp cornflour, ¾ cup cream, ½ cup water, strip of lemon rind, 2 tsp vanilla essence, 1 sheet of ready-made puff pastry

Steps: Preheat the oven to hot, 220 degrees Celsius. Grease a 12 hole (1/3 cup/80mL) muffin pan.

Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour in a small saucepan until combined. Gradually whisk in the cream and water until smooth.
Add the lemon rind, stir over medium heat until the mixture boil and thickens. Remove pan from the heat, remove and discard the rind, stir in the vanilla essence and then transfer the custard to a medium-sized bowl.
Cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap (to prevent a skin from forming as the custard cools).

Cut the puff pastry in half, stack the two halves on top of each other and then roll the pastry up tightly, and cut the log into twelve 1cm rounds. Lay pastry cut side up and roll each round to about 10cm width using a rolling pin. Press the rounds into the prepared muffin pans with your fingers.

Transfer spoonfuls of the cooled custard into the pastry cases and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until browned well. Stand tarts for 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool. Tastes best when served fresh!

Also a genius way of getting good pastry rounds! not as simple as using a circle cookie cutter tho (or a glass, cup, mug etc). i also prefer using filo pastry.



on another note, photobucket seems to be down. (like non-existant down) I also watched the toaster short its self out before it finished doing my toast on the weekend, so i have no toaster! (and keep forgetting to get another one)