Pear Danish - fruits for breakfast, check!

Pear has been in full season for few months and I have been having them in many different forms; fresh, poached and baked, in many different dishes; pancake, salad, cakes…and today, with Danish. I love cooking with seasonal produces. Not only that they taste better, they are also more economical and take less food miles to get to my plate.

These danishes were made using the croissant dough with natural starter. It can also be made with any croissant/laminated dough of your choice. The pastry was filled with crème patiserrie (pastry crème) and top with poached pears. I roughly followed the recipe from Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. I changed the recipe slightly by using my own poached pear recipe and different croissant dough.

It was the first time I made Danish. At first, the shaping was a little challenge. They kept springing back and shrinking. I finally got the hang of it after few tries.

These Danishes were heavenly, seriously good. They were moist, buttery and flavoursome. Crème patisserie and poached pears added dimensions and flavours to the pastry. They were perfect for breakfast and/or afternoon tea.  It didn’t make us feel so bad to have buttery pastry for breakfast, given that there were some small pieces of fruits on them J. Well, at least, we had fruits for breakfast.

Croissant with Natuaral Starter - the new PB

Another winning recipe from Suas’s Advance Bread and Pastry cookbook, Croissant made with Natural Starter (sourdough starter). So far, I have made croissants using four different formulas; one with preferment, one with poolish, whole wheat croissant and the latest into the repertoire, croissant made with natural starter.

I considered this batch my new PB (personal best) as it gave the most wonderful and flavoursome croissants, and the best looking ones tooJ. Contrary to what you might be thinking, that sourdough starter will produce sour taste croissants. This is not the case at all. The amount of starter was small enough not to give the acidic taste, but in the meantime, it was enough to enhance the flavour. If you have sourdough starter, I encourage you to give this recipe a go. Though there is a little extra step to prepare the starter dough (using natural starter), it is very well worth it.

Because Suas’ book gears towards professional, adjusting the recipe to a domestic batch size involved some math works. The recipe also didn’t include roll-in butter (for lamination). Converting the recipe to the homemade batch size resulted in tiny amount of egg used in preferment and half-egg in the final dough mixing. I omitted the egg in preferment altogether and used half of one egg in the final dough and the other half for egg wash.

The dough was a breeze to work with in the rolling and laminating departments. I'd like to believe that having sourdough starter and preferment contributed to the pallable and strong dough. Making croissants might sound daunting and involved but it is achievable and the results are truly rewarding. Fresh homemade croissants will beat any great commercial croissants. It made the perfect weekend for us and I'm sure it will make yours.

Croissant Bread Pudding

I never had bread and butter pudding before (until now). The idea never really appealed to me. Bread soaked in milky custard. It sounded soggy and rather unpleasant. How wrong was I? Though it wasn’t love at first bite, it was rather nice! It’s rich, moist and perfect for winter.

Bread and butter pudding is a great way to use up stale bread. Breads are soaked in custard and baked until they are set. It can be served with fruits, chocolate sauce, etc. It is a popular Australian dessert, especially for kids.  S said that it was something he loved and reminded him of his childhood (his mom made this often when he was a kid). I think it makes a great snack for kids. It got bread, milk and eggs (and of course, sugar). Doesn’t it resemble a breakfast recipe? Sure is, I made this in the morning and had them for breakfast dessert (after let the bread soak up the custard overnight).

This one was baked in square tin andserved with sesame ice cream

I used recipe from Tartine cookbook. Instead of white bread, I made this with stale me-made croissants. Isn’t it great to turn stale croissant to something absolutely delicious. S loved it so much and he was like, “now, we don’t have to give away croissants anymore ‘coz we can turn them into this”. Umm, don’t think so, I still like to share the buttery croissants with others. Though, we are both active persons, I don’t think we can keep up with eating 12 – 15 croissants every weekend. I say, let’s continue with the spirit of sharing croissants as usual.

Croissants made with poolish - the best so far, taste-wise

Having freshly baked croissants from your own oven for breakfast is something special, very special.  It makes perfect treat for weekend (that’s when I usually make croissants/laminated pastries). Umm… warm croissant with wonderful buttery aroma, what a fantastic way to spend the weekend.  Not only it tastes like heavenly, it smells like one too.Like anything else homemade, you-made croissant will taste better or at least equally nice as store-bought. 

Chocolate Croissant - what's not to love!

My croissant project is coming along nicely. I have been practicing on croissant/laminated dough for the past couple of months. The results are getting more consistent and predictable.

Though there were hits and misses, I am happy that I could produce patisserie-like croissant. They might not have looked perfect but they tasted wonderful and as good as the patisserie-bought ones (at least, I’d like to think so).

Before I embarked on the croissant-making journey, I always thought that it was too hard to tackle. It was one of the things that should be left with professional, not home cook. This was simply wrong. Croissant/laminated dough can be made successfully…at home! It is probably not the easiest thing but it is possible. With practices, baking tips, good recipe, and the will, you can definitely make it.

Whole Wheat Croissant - not as indulgent, is it?

At last, I bought Advance Bread and Pastry book by Michel Suas after seeing many good reviews about it from online baking community. This is a very comprehensive book on bread and pastry gearing towards professional bakers, which is also highly beneficial for serious home bakers.

Flipping through the book made me feel like reading a university textbook. In fact, it is a textbook for bread and pastry students. The book is gigantic  (over 4 kg in weight) and covers aspects of bread and pastry extremely well. It is like combining all the books that I have in one. 

The first chapter I had a look was Viennoiserie (sweet enriched bread and pastry).  I was excited to see many varieties of croissant recipes. There are ones made with poolish, with preferment, with sourdough starter, and whole wheat croissants made with straight dough and preferment.

I have been practicing making croissants/laminated doughs for the past weeks and was intrigued by whole wheat croissants idea. Wouldn’t it be nice to include wholegrain into buttery croissant? At least, I won’t feel too guilty having them.

Tartine's Morning Buns - best eaten in the morning, every morning

I came across the famous Tartine Morning Buns when I was searching for croissant images of Tartine Bakery (as I was on my mission to perfect the croissant making, I figured I should look up to the bestJ).

Note:

Tartine Bakery is a famous bakery in San Francisco located in the Mission District. I don’t live in San Francisco, neither USA.Tartine is famous among artisan bread-making community for its holey grail Country Loaves. That’s why I came to know Tartine and bought two of their cookbooks.

The buns received rave reviews on the blogosphere and I was curious to find out myself how good they are. I just bought Tartine cookbook (the pastry version) recently and look forwards to Morning Bun recipe. However, the recipe wasn’t included in the book.  I managed to locate the recipe online on 7x7 website. The bun is an indulgence version of cinnamon rolls and made with laminated (croissant) dough. That’s perfect, another recipe I can try to keep practicing on croissants.  The rolls are filled with the mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon and orange zest. Doesn’t that sound like a recipe for success, buttery flaky pastry filled with orange cinnamon sugar? Indeed, it was the success. It tasted soooo good, pure heaven. 

Lemon Tart - simple, classic, delicious

Getting into winter, there are abundant of lemons around. This is the time of the year when I have more lemons than I can chew. S mom has a very productive lemon tree and she gave them to us whenever we saw her.

There are a number of lemon recipes we love. Our most favourite lemon recipe is lemon tart. Lemon tart can be made in few different ways, bake or no-bake, butter or cream to emulsify and set the tart. All produce good results. Well, hardly anything can go wrong with lemon tart.

I made the tart using the recipe from Michel Roux’s fabulous Eggs cookbook. I never thought that a cookbook with egg theme could contain such wide variety of recipes, from pastry, ice cream, dessert, to pasta. It is a humble and simple ingredient with endless possibilities. 

Pain au Raisins, Snail, Escagot – a pastry with many names

One of the most loved pastry items with multiple identities, Pain au Raisin. Though it is widely known as Pain au Raisins (or Pain aux Raisins), it is also called escagot and snail. Many Aussies know this item as snails due to its shape.

It has everything that ticks, slightly spiced juicy sultana (golden raisin), pastry cream wrapped in buttery and flaky croissant dough. Some are also glazed with apricot jam, and finished off with icing sugar.

Daring Baker's Challenge - Maple Mousse Tart

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

As you might have guessed, Evelyne came from Canada, the land of maple syrup and my favourite breakfast dish, pancake with maple syrup and crispy bacon (what a great way to start the day, sweet and savoury at the same time). Her proposed dish was maple mousse served in crispy bacon, very interesting. Though, I would love to know how the mouse would taste like with the crispy bacon. I didn't follow the idea.

Inspired by my new book, “Chocolat: The Chocolate Bible by Le Cordon Bleu”, I intended to make chocolate cup from tempered chocolate to fill the mousse in. It was my first time making the chocolate container and tempering chocolate. Umm, it wasn’t easy. Tempering chocolate wasn’t too bad. But I had trouble taking the chocolate cup out of the mould in one piece. They were broken into pieces.

Almond Croissants - Naughty but Nice

I love almond croissant. It is my most favourite pastry item. S and I have our unofficial quest for the best croissant in Melbourne.

It’s actually not a planned quest but we just couldn’t help ourselves when we saw almond croissants anywhere we go...we always jumped to one. The one we enjoyed the most was from the local French cafe in Richmond near S’work,  Almost French. It’s humble cafe that made great bread and pastries. It is such a hidden gem waiting to be discovered.

The croissant recipe came from Bourke Street Bakery cookbook but the almond croissant part came from Poh’s Kitchen’s first episode with Emanuelle, a French chef from Perth. Poh’s Kitchen show got me hooked from the first episode, with the almond croissant and all. I love the show. Coming from the same kind of background, South East Asian with Chinese heritage, I feel related to many of her recipes. Her food brings back my childhood memories.

Raspberry and Chocolate Tart - a by product of failed Easter Egg Macarons

I had a plan…I had a vision about my Easter Macarons. Egg-shaped chocolate macarons filled with rich chocolate ganache mixed with peanut praline. The size would be about actual egg-size and ganache would be piped onto the shells decoratively and they would be served as dessert.

That didn’t eventuate as my convection oven was broken. Actually, I was persistent with the idea even though my oven didn’t work. I took the macaron batch to S’ house and baked from there.

You know the baker’s saying, “You have to know your oven”. This saying is so true for macarons, the most temperamental of all baked goods! I sort of know that S oven is hotter than mine. The actual temperature is hotter/higher than the temperature gauge. But I guess, I have been complacent with the macarons (I haven’t had failed batches for ages). The little diva just wanted to remind me how diva-like she could be!

Shatterd mac, shattered me!

I was shattered when I pulled the trays out. The macaron shells were as shattered as me. The shells were cracked, broken and sticky. This happened because the oven was too hot. Too high heat made the shells rose too quickly when they were not strong enough to withstand the rise. So, they cracked as a result. And once they’re cracked, there was no steam trapped inside the shell to help it cooked and puffed up. So, there were little feet and the shells weren’t cooked well as a result.

Thing was, I already made the ganache filling. At first, it felt like I had lost my will to make anything out of it. I was so ready to chuck it in the bin out of the frustration (Gosh, I was so involved with my baking sometimes, actually most of the times!). As frustrated as it was, I could have never thrown away food, not when it was still edible, not when it was chocolate ganache.

So, here goes, the chocolate ganache has become raspberry chocolate tart. I adapted the recipe from Michel Roux’s Pastry cookbook. This tart is simple yet so effectively delicious. The tart has fresh raspberry mixed with fresh mint leaves as the base and they are covered with chocolate ganache.

My chocolate ganache for macarons was slightly thicker than Michel Roux recipe. As a result, the tart didn’t look as smooth and looked a bit heavy but they tasted great nonetheless.

I used frozen raspberries instead of fresh. It worked well even though they became thick paste when mixed with mints. Mixing mints with raspberry was a great idea. It added more depth to the flavour of this tart.

This is a fabulous tart with lots of flavour and texture;  sweetness from chocolate ganache, tart and tang from raspberry, refreshing from mint and texture from the tart base. My thick chocolate ganache looked clumsy on the tart and didn’t do it enough justice. I’m terribly sorry, Mr Roux.

The full recipe can be found here, in The Age newspaper website to which Mr Roux gave the interview about a year ago (the recipe is in page 2 and 3 or the web page).

Have a happy Easter to all!

Bear Claws and fourth time is a charm making croissants

I'm on the mission, a very hopeful one, to make good-looking and delicious croissants, the ones with crisp and flaky crust with buttery-layered interior.

Gaining more tips and tricks, my fourth-time making croissant was a charm. Literally, I was doing happy feet when this batch of croissants turned out nicely and well-browned with lots of flaky layers. It made a great weekend for me.

 

There could be many factors that contribute to better results this week. I used different type of butter, the Danish style cultured butter, which is more pliable and easier to work with when it came to rolling. The room temperature was not as high as last week’s. It was around 20C which was perfect for making laminated dough (in my opinion). The butter remains solid, not melting. I also laminated the dough carefully. I rested the croissant dough frequently when I felt that I had to use the force in rolling it. This has helped tremendously as butter didn’t get worked too hard and melted. It was the first time that I rested dough while laminating each turn.

I retarded the shaped croissants overnight. It took 2.5 hours at 24C to fully-proof the retarded croissants. It is critical that the croissants are fully-proof before baking. This will ensure that you’ll get the flaky croissant filled with buttery layers.

I also made half of the batch into bear claws. It's croissant pastry filled with frangipani (a mixture of ground almond with sugar, butter and egg). The pastry was shaped and scored to resemble a bear’s foot, which is really cute. It is also yummy. It got the moisture and pronounced almond flavour from frangipane filling. It made a great snack for afternoon tea. 

I used the scrap pieces from the trimming of croissant dough to make a pesto baguette. The baguette turned out well and delicious. It even got flaky layers. The buttery baguette worked well with acidic tomato and rocket salad. It was a great and delicious way to use up the croissant scraps. Perfect! I didn't need to throw away food. 

I used the croissant recipe from Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. The full recipe can be found here.

Bear Claws Recipe
adapted from Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook

makes 10

Ingredients
1 quantity croissant dough, recipe is here

franginpane
55 g caster sugar
55 g unsalted butter
1 large egg
95 g almond meal (ground almond)

egg wash1 egg
1 tablespoon full-cream milk

Making frangipane

Cream the butter and sugar together until it is pale and creamy. Add egg and mix until combined. Add almond meal and mix until well-combined. Set aside.

Take the rested croissant dough from the fridge and roll it out into a rectangle, about 20 x 70 cm.

Cut the dough into ten 8 x 14 cm rectangles. Place the rectangles on trays lined with baking paper and place in the fridge for about 10 minutes to let the butter become solid after the rolling and let the gluten relax.

Remove the rectangles from the fridge and place 1 tablespoon of frangipane in the centre of each rectangle. Fold the dough in half, pressing the edge to seal. Make four 3-cm cuts on the wider sealed side to resemble the toes of a bear.

Place shaped bear claws on trays for proofing. Brushing the surface with egg-wash and cover the tray loosely with tea towel. Set aside in the warm room (about 25C) for 1 1/2 - 2  hours for proofing until it almost double in size.

The claws are proofed when you can see the layers or pastry and they are soft an jiggly when you slightly touch them.

Pre-heat the oven to 240C.

Remove the tea towel, lightly brush the dough surface with egg-wash and place them in the oven. Reduce temperature to 190c and bake for 20 - 25 minutes, or until they're a deep golden brown. Cool on racks and dust the claws with icing sugar before serving.

Submitting this post to YeastSpotting.

Third Time Lucky - Croissants and Pain au Jambon

It’s the third time lucky for me making croissant. Well, sort of. I think my third time yielded decent croissants but they are still far from what I want to achieve. I’m now on the mission to practice making croissants every week until I can make them with my eyes closed (you know, not literally with the eyes closed). S is quite pleased to learn this, as well as our neighbors who are more than happy to be guinea pigs.

I have learnt one thing or two every time I made croissants. Or something would emerge that I had to make note what not to do next time.

First time, I used recipe from Michel Roux’s Pastry cookbook. I was extremely new to bread making back then and had little idea on what dough characteristics I should be looking for. I also trusted the recipe wholeheartedly. Why shouldn’t I? It’s Michel Roux, the great French chef. Plus, recipes from his cookbooks provide great results. Umm, but not the croissant. The recipe has very low hydration (percentage of liquid to flour in the recipe) which makes too stiff a dough to work with. It was almost impossible to roll the dough and laminating butter. It was a disaster that I was put off making croissants for a long while.

My second attempt was better but there was still minor disaster happened. I used the recipe from Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. All went fine, kneading, laminating and all, until the final proofing (where you rest the shaped croissants to rise).  Because the bake was done on the cold day, I had to create the warm environment for final proofing. So, I was naively put bowl of boiling water next to the croissant tray. As you would imagine, the butter leaked and melted from layers and layers of dough lamination. Umm, another lesson learnt.

Couple of months ago, I was back onto making croissants again and using Michel Roux’s recipe again. This time, I was more experienced working with bread dough. So, I knew from the texture of the dough that it was not going to work. The dough was too stiff. I checked the recipe and finally realized that the hydration is only 50%. No wonder that the recipe yielded dough that was too stiff and impossible to roll and be laminated. So, I decided to abandon the croissant and turn it into (sort of) brioche (I find that it is difficult to throw away food). It wasn’t great brioche but still tasty nonetheless.

Brioche was made into dessert, Honey Toast (inspired from what I had in Japan)

That should have been my third time making croissants, but it didn’t eventuate. So, here comes the third time lucky making croissant. I also used the recipe from Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. Original recipe has 58% hydration which is slightly stiff to roll so I adjusted it to 60% hydration (I added more milk during the kneading when I felt that the dough was too stiff).

Overall, everything went fine, only some minor issues. The past weekend just happened to be a warm weekend (of all the mild summer we had, why did I choose to make croissant on the hottest weekend in the past six weeks? I will never know). The temperature was around 30c. Which make laminating dough with butter impossible (well, butter would melt, and the croissant will end up not flaky as it should be). I had to laminate the dough at night when the temperature was only down to 27C and let the laminated dough rest in the fridge overnight. This, I believe, contributed in a bread-like texture of the croissant and not-so-flaky texture I would love to see. 

It was more of the Mojito time than croissant making time! Croissant will have to wait!

I also had to bake and do the final shaping first thing the next morning when the temperature is around 29C in the kitchen. I had to improvise and proof the croissants in the coldest area in the house, bathroom, where temperature was around 25C. And it only took 1 ½ hours for final proof.

Improvised the proofing location to bathroom, the coldest part of the house.

All in all, the croissants went well. Anything baked fresh from oven would taste great. And it is even more so for fresh warm buttery croissant pulled out of your own oven. Umm, the fruits of my own labor.

Great aids for making croissant: French rolling pin, pizza wheel, and dough scraper

I also made half of the recipe into pain au jambon (ham and cheese croissant). I came across this Pain au Jambon idea from Tartine Bakery's. It is an unusual and interesting way to make ham and cheese croissant. Ham and cheese are rolled inside the croissant (note: I didn't really see the recipe or how this is done at Tartine but I saw the photo of finished Pain au Jambon and I figured it could have been done this way). This croissant tasted very nice. Ham and cheese penetrated flavor into the baked croissant and made them very tasty, rich and moist.  The brief recipe and photos of pain au jambon is at the end of the post.

My croisssant against Mr Chad @ Tartine's

Here is the recipe…

Croissant Recipe
adapted from Bourke Street Bakery cookbook
makes 12 croissants

Ingredients

Croissant pre-ferment
50g bread flour
28 ml full-cream milk
3 g brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon (1.5 g) salt
1/2 teaspoon (1 g) dried instant yeast
10 g unsalted butter, soften

Final dough
470 g bread flour

284 ml (1 cup + 2 tablespoons) full-cream milk
30 g soft brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon (7 g) salt
1 teaspoon (3 g) dried instant yeast
250g unsalted butter, for laminating the dough

Egg wash
1 egg
2 tablespoon milk
a pinch of salt

Method
To make the pre-ferment, mix all ingredients together in a bowl until it becomes a ball. Knead it for about 10 minutes until becomes elastic and smooth. If using electric mixer, using dough hook and mix on low speed for 3 minutes.

Put the pre-ferment in a bowl covered with plastic bag and leave at room temperature for 2 hours to ferment. After, store the pre-ferment in the fridge overnight (this can be kept for few days in the fridge).

To mix the final dough, divide the pre-ferment into 8-10 small pieces, mix it together with all other ingredients, except butter, in a mixing bowl until a dough ball is formed.

Transfer the dough ball to a bench and knead for 10 - 15 minutes (by hand) until the dough become smooth and elastic, and doesn't tear when streched gently. If using electric mixer, using dough hook, mix on low speed for 3 -4 minutes, followed by high speed for another 2 minutes.

Smooth and elastic dough that can be strecthed without breaking

Put the dough in a bowl covered with plastic bag or cling wrap and refridgerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Before starting the dough laminating (i.e. incorporating butter into the dough) remove the butter from the fridge. Pound the butter with rolling pin between two sheets of baking paper into 15-cm flat square. If the butter becomes too soft, store it in the fridge for 15 minutes before using.

Take the croissant dough out of the fridge, using a ligthly floured rolling pin, roll the dough out into a retangle about 15 x 30 cm. Place the butter in the centre of the dough and fold th dough over the top. Seal the edges of the dough together to ensure the butter is completely enclosed in the dough.

Gently and carefully roll the dough out into a rectangle, about 20 x 50 cm (approximately 3 times longer than the piece you started with). Mentally divide the rectangle into three equal sections, top, middle and bottom. Fold the top section over the middle, and fold the bottom to the middle, like folding a letter.

Wrap the dough in a plastic bag or cling wrap and refrigerate for (at least) 30 – 60 minutes.

Take the dough out of the fridge and rotate the dough 90 degree so that the dough will be rolled in opposite direction from previous fold. Repeat the rolling, folding, and resting process as above two more times. There will be three foldings and rollings (the term is “three turns”) altogether and you need to rotate the dough 90 degree with each rolling.

After the final rolling and folding, store the laminated dough in the fridge for 40 - 60 minutes before shaping into croissants.
Make the egg wash by mixing all ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

Take the laminated dough out of the fridge and roll it out into a rectangle about 25 x 50 cm with 5 -8 mm thick.

Trim the edges of the dough so that it becomes a neat rectangle.

Cut the dough into triangles with 9-cm base and 21-cm height. Stack triangle sheets on baking sheet/papers and chill for 10 minutes.

Take the chilled triangles out of the fridge and shape into croissants. Gently pull the tip of triangle to make the triangle longer.  Make 1-cm incision at the base of triangle. Pull away two corners at the base and roll it towards the tip. Make sure that the tip is tucked underneath the croissant. Gently brings two corners towards each other to create a crescent shape.

Place shaped croissants on trays lined with baking sheet or paper.

Note: Shaped croissants can be retarded in the fridge overnight and bake the next day. Take them out of the fridge next day and follow the proofing and baking steps as below. Brush the surface lightly with egg-wash. Cover the tray with tea towel.  Let it stand at warm room temperature (25 c -27 c) for 2 hours until it almost double in size.

Note: Croissants are proofed and ready for the bake when the layers become visible and the croissant are very soft and wobbly.



Proof -croissant with visible layers, soft and wobbly texture



Preheat the oven to 240c.

Brush the surface of croissant with egg wash before baking. Reduce oven temperature to 190c and bake for 20 - 25 minutes until it is deeply golden brown.

There are lots of room for improvement.

Pain au Jambon (Ham and Cheese Croissant) Recipe
makes 4 croissants

Croissant ingredients and method are as above

Additional ingredients
2 large round smoked ham (or 4 small pieces ham or your choice)
4 thinly sliced gruyere or swiss cheese (or cheese of your choice)

Follow the instructions making croissant as above.

After cutting the dough into triangle, place a rolled-piece of ham and cheese at the base of triangle. Roll the dough and following instructions as above for shaping, final proofing and baking.

Rolled ham and cheese are put inside the croissant

Seriously yummy!

Submitting this post to YeastSpotting.

Portuguese Custard Tart - pasteis de nata - Accidental Dessert Hero

Throwing away food is something I find difficult to do, and as such, the very first time I made Portuguese custard tarts, it was because I had a heap of egg yolks left over from making a pavlova, the queen of Australian meringue desserts.

By browsing through cookbooks and online, I came across a tart that is the perfect candidate for the yolks, Portuguese custard tart. And now, the tart is a great way to use up the egg yolks from making all those macarons.

This Portuguese custard tart, Pasteis de Nata in Portuguese, is a favorite of many of my friends and family. My niece loves it, my workmates love it, my friends love it, they asked that I posted the recipe. Comes to think about it, I still haven't come across anyone who doesn't like custard tart. S' mum who isn’t a dessert fan, loves them. She occasionally requests them, and this makes me happy because she gets a treat and I find a good home for the orphan yolks.

The tart is also popular in Hong Kong, and even more so in Macau which used to be Portuguese colony (it explains why the tarts in Macau are so good). So, Asians love them, Australians love them, custard tarts are so universally appealing, in Bangkok last year, KFC (the fried chicken franchise) launched them which made them even more popular.

Custard and puff pastry, is everything you would want in a sweet snack, creamy custard with buttery crisp and flaky pastry.

I used the recipe from Australian Woman’s Weekly Cook Book: How to cook absolutely everything, but adapted the method from the food channel in UK, by baking blind the puff pastry before baking the custard.

Note: Apologies to UK food channel, I haven’t been able to locate the site I visited, hence I was unable to provide the link or gave credit where it’s due.  

The typical characteristic of this tart is the browning on the custards, which is, apparently, not easy to achieve. It’s a balancing act to get browning without the custard curdling. I have made this tart a number of times in the past two years. For reasons yet known, blind-baking the tart case leads to the custard browning and retaining a silky smooth texture.

This batch was baked without using blind-baking.
The tart was sligthly curdled and the brown spots were hardly there.

Not blind-baking the tart means having to bake the tart much longer to achieve the brown spot. Even so, there were only a tiny amount of browning and the custard slightly curdled. Therefore, blind-baking (filling the tart case with pie weights and bake for 10-15 minutes before putting the tart filling) is highly recommended if you want the true characteristics of Pasteis de Nata.

For the pastry, I used my home-made rough puff pastry. Rough puff pastry won't rise as much and gives as many layers as the classic puff pastry but tastes equally good. It’s so much simpler (and quicker) to make. You can also use store-bought ready-rolled puff pastry. However, I encourage you to give rough puff pastry a go, it's very easy and you'll love it. If you make your own puff pastry, you’ll need to prepare it about 4 hours in advance or even the day before. Puff pastry can be frozen for up to 4 weeks. Making a big batch and freezing it as portions will save you heaps of time later on if you want to make things like sausage rolls, pies, tart tartin, pissaladiere, etc. etc.

Here is the recipe...

Portuguese Custard Tart (Pasteis de Nata) recipe
adapted from Australian Woman Weekly's Cook: How to cook absolutely everything 

makes 12 tarts

Ingredients
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup (110 g) caster sugar
2 tablespoons (30 g) cornflour
1 cup (250ml) cream
1/2 cup (125ml) water
strip of lemon rind
2 teaspoons vanilla extrac
1 sheet ready-rolled buttered puff pastry or half of rough puff pastry recipe below 

Preheat oven to 220 c / 200 c fan-forced. Grease 12-hole (80ml) muffin pan. Whisk egg yolks, sugar, cornflour, cream and water in medium saucepan.

Add rind; stir over medium heat until mixture just comes to a boil (keep stirring to prevent custard become curdling). Remove from heat immediately. Remove rind; stir in vanilla extract.

Cut puff pastry sheet in half; stack halves on top of each other. Stand about 5 minutes or until thawed (you don't need to thaw your home-made puff pastry as long as it is not frozen). Roll pastry up tightly, from the short side; cut log into 12 x 1 cm rounds.

Lay pastry, cut-side up, on lightly floured work bench; roll each round out to about 10 cm. Push round into muffin pans.

Blind bake the tart case at 220C for 10 minutes. To blind-bake the tart, line each tart case with non-stick baking paper, fill the tart cases with pie weight (ceramic or steel weights) or dried rice or bean.

Remove pie weights or beans, and fill the tart with custard to about 0.5 cm from top.

Bake tarts about 20 minutes or until well browned. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Crisp, flaky pastry. Slight swirl at the bottom of pastry.

Rough Puff Pastry recipe
from Michel Roux's Pastry: Savory and Sweet

make 600 g

250 g plain flour (all-purpose flour)
250 g cold butter, cut into small cubes
1/2 tsp salt
125 ml very cold water

Note: you need very cold water so that the butter won't melt when water is incorporated into the dough.

Heap the flour and salt together on the counter and make a well in the centre (you can also work this in a big mixing bowl).

Gently rub butter into the flour until the dough becomes grainy (rough breadcrumbs texture) and butter is roughly incorporate.  

Gradually add cold water and mix until it is all incorporated and comes together as a dough ball. Do not overwork the dough as we don't want any gluten development and a tough pastry as a result.

Roll the dough into a ball and wrap in a cling wrap. Chill for 30 minutes.

Dust the work bench with flour and roll the dough into 30 x 15 cm rectangle, approximately. Fold it into three, like a letter fold. Give the dough a quarter-turn (you will now roll the dough in a different direction from previously). Roll the dough into 30 x 15 cm rectangle and do the letter fold again (fold into three). These are the first two turns. Wrap the dough in cling wrap and chill for another 30 minutes.

Give the cold dough 2 more turns (these are the final two turns), rolling and folding as before. This makes a total of four turns, and the pastry is now ready to be used. Wrap it in a plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes before using.

The left-over dough will last in the freezer up to 4 weeks. Freeze them in portions in a zip-lock bag or cling wrap.