The soft food diet my doctor’s office gave me included “cream-filled pie” as an acceptable dessert. Yea! So I made Portuguese Custard Tarts. I first tasted these Pasteis de Nata at the airport in Lisbon when traveling with my daughter to visit my son and his wife in France. One of these was my breakfast along with coffee after an overnight flight. They were so tasty that I brought a package back with me to share with Hubby. We were fans from the get go.

When I was recovering from my multiple fractures sustained in 2023 my Physical Therapist was of Portuguese heritage. When asked about these tarts he referred to them by the Portuguese name and told me of a bakery in another town where they were made and very good. He added though that the bakery makes them for Sunday mornings and runs out quickly. I never got around to explore that option.

I have made custard tarts before but not specifically Pasteis de Nata. https://wordpress.com/post/mykitchenmythoughts.com/8145 and https://wordpress.com/post/mykitchenmythoughts.com/5246.

This recipe is from Food and Wine and was in my news feed as I was scrolling. It did not require fancy ingredients and was straight forward in its directions. https://www.foodandwine.com/pasteis-de-nata-8723092. The only thing I did differently was use 2 % milk instead of whole milk.

• 2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
• 1 3/4 cups milk
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 3-inch strip of lemon peel
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 4 large egg yolks

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F. Layer the puff pastry and roll into a log. Cut this into 12 equal pieces. These are to flattened with wet fingers and shaped into 3-inch shallow bowls to fit into the muffin pan and up the sides. Leave these at room temperature while preparing the custard.

Put the milk, butter, cinnamon and lemon peel into a medium sauce pan over medium heat. While this is heating whisk the flour, sugar, and cornstarch in a medium bowl until combined. Whisk egg yolks in a large bowl until smooth. When milk mixture begins to boil , remove the cinnamon stick and lemon peel with a slotted spoon. Whisk in the flour mixture whisking constantly until thickened but not boiling about one minute. Remove from heat. Gradually add the milk flour mixture to the egg yolks whisking constantly. (The recipe instructions states here to strain through sieve into a heatproof measuring cup with spout. I did not do so and am proud to announce I had no scrambled egg bits at all. It was the constant whisking.)

Pour into the pastry cups and bake in preheated oven until golden brown. Then change oven to broiler setting and broil the tops until browned in spots. Let cool in pan for five minutes and then remove to cool on a wire rack.

Making the pastry cups was the hardest part. Next time I will cut circles out of puff pastry or I will roll the sections of puff pastry into flat circles before putting them in the muffin pan. The pastry was a little thicker than I had wanted. It is also important to have the various portions that make up the custard ready in their bowls before hand. The thing is I now have four egg whites in my fridge needing to be used. I had some leftover custard and baked it along with the tarts. We had this later spooned over canned peaches.

These were a hit with Hubby, very tasty. I had one and one-half along with a cup of tea for dessert while watching the Yankees lose the World Series in Game 5.