Sunday, 14th of January – Portugal was on my list for travel for quite a while, but to be honest, it was to go to Algarve. And in the end, I ended up in Braga, the home town of Margarida, a great dear friend I met in Winterthur 10 years ago. Guida and Jochem met when we were studying business in Switzerland, and they have been together ever since. And last year, they got married in Portugal. A good occasion to go discover Porto and all the gastronomical portuguese specialties. And I got in front of THE pastel de nata. The famous one. And indeed, it is addictive. In the meantime, I spoke more and more in my broken spanish with Laura at work. She baked the pastels several times, and she is such a generous person that she shared with me her recipe. And she is even so generous that for Christmas, she got me the special metal mould to do the pastels. I had no choice but try them today.

TIME: Preparation 15 minutes / Baking 17 minutes1

INGREDIENTS (for 12 pastels):

• 1 puff pastry
• 50cL milk
• 200g sugar
• 1 vanilla bean
• 2 table spoon Maïzena
• 3 egg yolks

PREPARATION

Material: rolling pin, medium cooking pan, wooden spoon, sieve, large glass of water, 12 metal moulds for pastel, measuring glass

1. Preheat the oven at 250°C.
2. Spread the puff pastry and flour it. With the glass of water, mark 12 circles.
3. Flour the metal moulds and place the pastry circles inside (flour side towards the mould).
4. Open the vanilla bean, and extract the vanilla seeds.
5. In a cooking pan, put together the milk, sugar, Maïzena, the vanilla bean and the seeds. Boil the preparation without stopping stirring until it gets creamy. Take it out of the heat. Let cool down.
6. Once cooled down, add the yolks and stir well.
7. Sieve the preparation into a measuring glass and pour it into the moulds covered of pastry. Fill in only until half of the pastry.
8. Bake for 17 minutes on the oven rack. Once the cream gets slightly burned and the pastry is golden, they are ready! Take them out of the oven and let cool down before the tasting.

The SweetSundayBaker tips & tricks

1. Don’t fill in the moulds too much with cream, otherwise it will overflow while baking (and you can say hello oven cleaning product)
2. Sieve the preparation to remove the lumps
3. For the pastry circle, the large glasses of Ikea are ideal
4. If the pastels get too dark too fast, turn down the temperature of the oven to 200°C
5. Using a measuring glass to pour the preparation into the moulds facilitate the process