How to Make Portuguese Custart Tarts- Pastéis de Nata!

1. Welcome- What are Portuguese Custard Tarts: Hello. My name is Rita. Welcome to this class. I am a Portuguese pastry chef. I also have a YouTube channel dedicated to pastry, and I teach baking classes, and I also write books about it. Today, I'm happy to share with you the most famous and iconic Portuguese pastry, the Pastel D nata, or you might know it as Portuguese Custard tart. If you have tasted them, you know what I am talking about. If you haven't tasted them, it's pastry that consists on a very flaky puff pastry on the outside, and a very rich and luscious cream on the inside, lightly flavored with lemon and cinnamon. They are absolutely fantastic. They are adored here in Portugal. Portuguese people eat them at any occasion. Some people like to eat it for breakfast or a midmorning snack with a shot of espresso. Sometimes it's served as a dessert or an afternoon snack, and it's always present at parties. Here in Portugal, it's not that common that we bake them at home because they are very easily accessible. They are not expensive, and also because in bakeries, they are baked at a much higher temperature than our ovens at home can reach. Usually we buy them at our local bakery. I am going to share with you a very easy recipe that is adapted for the domestic ovens. If you are not in Portugal and if you want to eat these delicious pastries, keep watching the class. 2. Ingredients: Now, we are going to take a look at the ingredients we are going to use. They are very simple. I'm going to teach you how to make the custard with these ingredients. I'm also going to teach you how to prepare the little molds that we are going to use. For convenience, we are going to use store bought puff pastry. I'm going to leave the written recipe with all the measurements in the class notes. Will need sugar, flour, cornstarch, milk, lemon, cinnamon, egg yolks, and puff pastry, and more on each ingredient next. For the sugar, we will use a normal refined white sugar. We will use yolks from large eggs. Use an all purpose flour or a plain flour that you can find in your country. We will use just the peel of the lemon without the white part, a cinnamon stick. As for the milk, we will use whole milk. Here, we can find these pre rolled rectangles of puff pastry, those are perfect. But you can use whatever puff pastry you find in your country, you can use a piece of puff pastry and then roll it into a rectangle. 3. Making the custard: Let's start by making the custard. Into a medium saucepan, we are going to sift the flour and the cornstarch and then add the sugar. With a whisk, we will mix everything very well, and then we will start to add the milk. Add a little bit of the milk first to start dissolving the sugar, the flour, and the cornstarch, and then add the rest of the milk slowly. Let's add now the lemon peel. I like to use a vegetable pillar for this, the pel should be very thin, and we are going to use three pieces of the p, and we're going to add as well the cinnamon stick. Now, we are going to take the saucepan to the stove in low heat, and with the whisk, we are going to mix continuously so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. In about three to 5 minutes, the mixture will start to thicken. When it starts to thicken, just be careful and whisk more vigorously. As soon as it starts to boil, count about 30 to 40 seconds and then turn off heat and take the saucepan out of the stove. This is how it should look like almost like a Bahamel sauce. It should be thick creamy and shiny. Leave it to cool for about 15 minutes and meanwhile, add the yolks into a bowl. Break them up with a fork or a spoon and once your milk cream is not as hot, add a little bit to the yolks and then add this yolk mixture into the saucepan little by little, and always mixing with the wheat. Till everything is well incorporated, and that's basically our custard ready. All we have to do now is to strain it into a bowl so we can get rid of the lemon peel, the cinnamon, and some lump that the custard might have. It should look like this. It should be very shiny, light yellow, and very smooth. Now cover it with cling film and take it to the fridge for at least half an hour before using it. 4. What tins/molds to use: And now I'm going to talk a little bit about the molds that we're going to use, the tins, whatever you want to call them. Here we have very specific Portuguese custard tart tins. They are very, very similar to the muffin tins like this, but they are slightly different. The difference is that they have a smaller bottom. Here, it's narrower. And also, the sides are much more open instead of more closed like the puffin ones. These specific ones for the custard tarts, since they are a little bit more open, it's going to be better for the puff pastry to puff here around the sides, but it's a very small difference. If you don't have the ones, you can use this ones, or if you don't have any of these kind, are going to probably have one of these, you can still use them. It's going to be a little bit more difficult to put the puff pastry here, but it's still doable. Use whatever you have at home. You're going to have good patage nata either way. 5. Preparing the tins with the puff pastry: This might be the trickiest part of the whole recipe, so let's go over it slowly. Unroll your roll of puff pastry or roll your piece of puff pastry and then sprinkle it lightly with water. We don't want to get the puff pastry all wet. This is just to help the puff pastry to glue to itself when we are rolling it. Roll it tightly and try to glue as much as possible that last piece into the rest of the roll. And roll it for a couple of times more, so it's very tight. This roll should have more or less the diameter of two fingers. That's about an inch or 2-3 centimeters. The puff pastry should be cold. If it's hot where you live, you might want to refrigerate it for about half an hour before this next step. We are going to cut pieces of the roll of the puff pastry with the diameter of more or less one finger, and you should have these pieces of like a spiral of puff pastry. Place the pieces of puff pastry at the bottom of each tin and get a small bowl of water. Are going to slightly wet our thumbs so they don't glue to the puff pastry, and we are going to use them to stretch it. Start by pressing it down so it creates a base, and then with one of your thumbs stretch the puff pastry from the bottom all the way to the border of the tin and rotate the tin as you do this movement. Can wet your tongue whenever you feel the need, and you can correct the puff pastry until it looks like this. It should be smooth and it should be all the same size around and have a little bit of a border that comes a little bit up from the border of the tin. It should be thin all the way around especially at the bottom, but not as thin that it becomes transparent. Now all we have to do is do this to all the tins. These are the traditional for the postage nata, the ones that have wider sides. It makes this process a little bit easier. You can use them right away, or if you want to use them later, or if it's too hot, you can put them in a tray, cover them with cling film and store them in the fridge. These here are regular muffin tins and I am also going to show them the process is the same. But since they have a little bit of a taller site, it's going to be a little bit more challenging to take all the puff pastry all the way. Just be careful adjust as you go and be a little bit patient. Lastly, I'm going to show you how to do the same thing in one of those muffin tins that come glued in a set. You are going to start by flattening the little piece of puff pastry. Then you're going to place it in the middle of your tin, and slowly, you are going to do the same thing, which is to stretch from the bottom up, always wetting your to whenever you feel the need. It's going to take a little bit of more time in this kind of tins, but as you can see, it also works. 6. Baking: Now that we have both elements ready, the custard, and the tins prepared with the puff pastry, we can either bake them right away or you can store them both in the fridge for up to three days and they will be ready to bake whenever you want. Speaking of baking, that's exactly what we are going to do now, and the most important thing is to preheat your oven. Oven needs to be very, very hot. Usually in bakeries, they bake them at a very, very high temperature around 400 Celsius, that's about 750 Fahrenheit. In our homes, our ovens usually go up to 250 celsius. That's about 480 Fahrenheit. So that's the temperature that we are going to use. Pre heat the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes, so it has time to reach that temperature. Meanwhile, we are going to fill our tins and wait. When you're ready to bake, give your custard a little stir and transfer it to a jug. It's going to be much easier to fill your tins this way and fill your tins up to three quarters of the way. Don't overfill them because the custard expands a little bit in the oven, and it might overflow. In fact, you can use a tray with parchment paper. So if this happens, it's going to make clean up much easier. Now they are ready to take into your hot hot oven, and don't overfill your tray, so there's enough air circulation between the tins, and meanwhile, the first patch is baking, you can go ahead and fill the other tins with the rest of the custard. Depending on the size of your teens with these quantities, you will be able to make 12-16 custard tarts. 7. Tips for and after baking: It will take more or less 15 minutes for them to bake, but it will obviously depend on your oven. We are looking for the puff pastry on the sides to be very golden and with a crisp and flaky look, and the custard in the center should have a few darker spots. Sometimes even some that are black, almost burned. They are characteristic of the Portuguese custard tarts. They add to the flavor. When you start noticing these spots and the puff pastry appears to be cooked, take them out of the oven carefully, and they will be very it's normal. Then as they are cooling, they will go down. Leave them alone for at least 15 to 20 minutes before trying to unmold them. When you are ready to do that, take a palette knife or a knife and run it around the tin, and they should come out easily. Sometimes what happens is that the custard will overflow a little bit, and it will glue to the upper part of the tin. Just go with a knife, cut that, and you're good to go. So let me show you, as you can see, it's very easy. Run the palette knife around the custard tart, and they will come right out of the tin. There's no need to grease the tins because the puff pastry has enough fat and do this that 15 to 20 minutes after you take them out of the oven, don't let them cool in the tins. Otherwise, that fat can get hard and they can glue to the tins. Here it is a typical pestil Natta with a shiny custard with darker spots, and on the bottom, you can see the rolled puff pastry. They are wonderful, served worm, not hot because they can burn your tongue, but worm, they are fantastic. They are fantastic cold as well. And they are specially good the day that they are baked. They are still good the day after or two days after. But the experience of eating the puff pastry crispy with a creamy custard, you can only achieve that on the day that you bake them. The next day two days after, they are still going to be very tasty, but the puff pastry will absorb the moisture of the custard and it will be soft. In the next segment, I will taste one, and I will show you how do they look inside. 8. Let's taste them: There is nothing quite as a plate full of worm petage nata. You can enjoy them simple or sprinkled with cinnamon. Let's cut into one, and this is how they should look inside. The puff pastry should be crisp all around, and the custard in the center should be shiny and very, very creamy. And when you bite into one, this is how it should sound. 9. Goodbye: And there you go. This is how to make Portuguese custard charts in a very easy way at home. I really hope you have enjoyed this class. Obviously, the class project is to bake a batch of this. If you do that, please upload the picture so I can see how they turned out. If you like this class, check my other classes here as well, and you can find me on YouTube at dolera. See you on my next class.